THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

92

McCctmick

The century of the reaper

67-32393

CYRUS HALL MK ORMK K

Inventor of the Reaper

About 1880

THE CENTURY OF
THE REAPER

An Account of CYRUS HALL McCoRMicK,
the Inventor of the Reaper: of the McCoRMicK
HARVESTING MACHINE COMPANY, the Business
he created: and of the INTERNATIONAL HAR
VESTER COMPANY, his Heir and chief Memorial

BY

CYRUS MCCORMICK

With Illustrations

Boston and New York
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

1931

roi Yiutarr, ig.jt, wrcvittTH MWOUMICK

AIX RIWHTH KICSKRVMl) Mn.UWNCi TlliC H1UUT T
THIS UOOK Ott PARTS THJUtMOK IN ANY

CAMBRIDGE

PRINTED IN nm

TO
MY GRANDMOTHER

^fiSAS Of If (Hfc.) PUBOG

In this volume the genesis and evolution of
the International Harvester Company are
traced in outline by Cyrus McCormick, who
also commemorates the life and work of Cyrus
Hall McCormick, his grandfather, and ap
praises his service to mankind.

As the son of the inventor and the father of
the author I take pleasure in presenting to you
this personal tribute^ published on the occasion
of the centenary of the invention of the reaper.

FOREWORD

THIS book represents such honor as I can pay to the life-
work of the inventor of the reaper. It must be obvious
that I, his grandson, am not in a position to write a coldly
impartial account of his contribution to history. I am too
proud of his career, and of its continuation in the life-
work of other members of my family and their associates,
to be anything but a partisan as to Cyrus Hall McCor-
mick s place in the perspective of time. I believe, further,
that the countless Harvester men who are following in his
footsteps are themselves actuated largely by the pride
they feel in their employment. There is something em
inently satisfactory in being engaged in a worth-while
task.

I hope the account I now give will be accepted, not as
propaganda for any special interest, but as a partial
record of a century of development in certain phases of
the agricultural implement industry. It has not been
prepared as an official statement of harvesting machine
history inspired in any way by the International Har
vester Company. Nevertheless, that organization has a
definite place in the picture as the lineal descendant of the
business my grandfather founded. I could not have told
the story of the events which have led up to the reaper s
centennial celebration without indicating that I respect it
too* After all, there is no reason why this generation may
not take pride in its own sincerity as well as in the fine
deeds of its forbears.

Prejudiced though I may be in favor of the reaper and
its machine heirs, I have endeavored to be as accurate as

viii FOREWORD

possible in the presentation of the facts of this story of a
century. While I have gone to original sources as often as
possible, the exigencies of my own day-to-day duties in
the International Harvester Company have left too little
time for original research. I have therefore had recourse
to such secondary material as the excellent summary,
Cyrus Hall McCormick and the Reaper/ by Thwaites;
to Casson s two picturesque books, 4 Cyrus Hall McCor
mick and The Romance of the Reaper ; to Ardrey s
American Agricultural Implements ; and to an unpub
lished thesis by Leigh, Marketing of Harvesting Ma
chinery/

Most of all I have relied for the facts relating to my
grandfather s earlier career on his biographer, Professor
William T. Hutchinson, the first volume of whose * Cyrus
Hall McCormick has just been published by the Cen
tury Company, of New York, It is to be regretted that
the second volume, which will cover the period from
the Civil War to McCormick s death, cannot appear for
some time. Until then it will be impossible to get a com
plete picture of my grandfather s life without a painstak
ing examination of one of the most voluminous bodies of
private and official correspondence I Have ever seen*

For the middle period of this century of farm equipment
progress, I have leaned heavily upon my father s diaries
and upon conversations with him and with Mr, Alexander
Legge, whose keen perception has missed little of signi
ficance in the most recent forty years of the life of the
McCormick Harvesting Machine Company and the In
ternational Harvester Company, I have also had the in
valuable help of certain business associates whose active
careers have spanned the period of my life- Mr. M , J Rod
ney, still an active Harvester man in charge of the Com
pany s Australian affairs, has provided me with a store of

FOREWORD ix

anecdotes concerning the fine old fighting days. Many
other delightful and stimulating stories have come from
Mr. H. H. Wiggin and the members of the Harvester Club
of Southern California, an organization of retired war
riors whose loyalty to Harvester ideals is one of the bright
spots in Harvester history. They have collected for me
many recollections which deserve far more attention than
the small place such a cursory book as this has been able
to provide.

Needless to say I have been on surer ground for source
material concerning more recent times, I have myself
been actively engaged in this business since 1915, either in
distribution or production, and I have been in daily asso
ciation with men whose years of service have been co
extensive with the years of the International Harvester
Company. Aside from the memory of my own experiences,
I have been greatly helped by references to the files of
the Harvester World, to the Company s published annual
statements, and to the mass of correspondence, speeches
on Company policy, articles, etc., which exhibit the pro
gressive growth of a constantly developing business.

Many members of the present Harvester organization
have helped me enormously. I wish I might name them
all ; but it has seemed better to allow the achievements of
to-day to remain anonymous. Some have placed at my
disposal their own researches into the history of the busi
ness. Others have been good enough to read my manu
script, to restrain my exuberance for the subject, and to
do all those thankless but friendly tasks which confront
the critics of an amateur author. Others have given me
pointed, but, I confess, constructive, criticisms on my
effort as a writer of history.

But is this history? I like to think of it rather as part of
a living drama of I know not how many continuing scenes.

x FOREWORD

The play tells the story of American industry and this
narrative is a part of it- We are the actors of the moment,
successors of those actors of the past to whose lives
and work we owe our opportunity to serve,

C. McC.

CHICAGO, January i, 1931

CONTENTS

I. THE INVENTION OF THE REAPER i

II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INVENTION 17

III. THE INVENTION OF A BUSINESS 33

IV. THE EVOLUTION OF THE INDUSTRY 54
V. THE PIONEER 73

VI. THE HARVESTER WAR 89

VII. FORMATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER

COMPANY 1 1 1

VIII. THE EARLY HARVESTER COMPANY YEARS 128

IX. THE TRANSITION TO MODERN MACHINERY 145

X. LAWSUITS, WAR, AND DEPRESSION 164

XL RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION 185

XI L POWER FARMING 204

XIII. THE DISTRIBUTION OF FARM EQUIPMENT 226

XIV. THE HARVESTER SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION 247
XV. ADMINISTRATION OF THE HARVESTER COMPANY 271

XVI. THE INDUSTRY OF THE FUTURE 281

INDEX 293

ILLUSTRATIONS
CYRUS HALL MCCORMICK, INVENTOR OF THE REAPER

From a pastel by Lawton S. Parker, about 1880 Frontispiece

THE FIRST PUBLIC TRIAL OF McCoRMioc s REAPER, NEAR
STEELE S TAVERN, VIRGINIA, 1831

From a lithograph published about 1883

THE BLACKSMITH SHOP OF WALNUT GROVE FARM IN
WHICH CYRUS HALL MCCORMICK BUILT HIS REAPER
IN 1831 10

WORKING REPLICA OF THE ORIGINAL REAPER 18

CYRUS HALL MCCORMICK IN HIS THIRTIES 22

From a daguerreotype

THE FIRST MCCORMICK REAPER FACTORY, ON THE CHI
CAGO RIVER, AS IT APPEARED BEFORE THE FIRE OF 1871 36

A MCCORMICK ADVERTISEMENT OF 1849 44

MCCORMICK S SELF-RAKE REAPER OF 1864 64

A MCCORMICK HARVESTER OF THE MARSH TYPE, POPU
LAR DURING THE YEARS 1875-1883 64

THE MCCORMICK HARVESTER AND WIRE BINDER OF 1876
THE FIRST SELF-BINDER 70

ONE OF THE FIRST MCCORMICK TWINE BINDERS, BUILT

IN 1881 70

CYRUS HALL MCCORMICK SHOWN WITH A GROUP OF DIS
TINGUISHED AMERICAN INVENTORS 80

From a steel engraving published by the Scientific American in
1862 after a painting by Schussele

NETTIE FOWLER MCCORMICK, WIFE OF THE INVENTOR 90

From a photograph made about 1 870

CYRUS H. MCCORMICK, ELDEST SON OF THE INVENTOR 94

THE FOUR MAJOR HARVESTING MACHINES OVER WHICH
THE BATTLES OF THE HARVESTER WAR WERE WAGED 100

xiv ILLUSTRATIONS

SOME OF THE WARRIORS WHO MADE FARM-MACHINE HIS
TORY DURING THE PlONEER YEARS OF THE INDUSTRY:

HUSSEY, MANNY, MCORMJCK, DKBRING, APPLKBY,
OSBORNE, BUSHNELL, MARSH, MlLLKR, AND WOOD IO8

INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER BINDERS IN ALGERIA AND
IN FRANCE 116

HAROLD F. McCoRMicK 140

ALEXANDER LKGGK 140

INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER TRACTOR SHOWN AT AMIENS,
FRANCE, 1909 158

THREE INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER TRACTORS PULLING
FIFTY-FIVE PLOW-BOTTOMS 158

EARLY TYPES OF LIGHT TRACTORS MOGUL 8-16 AND
TITAN 10-20 196

STANDARD PRESENT-DAY TYPE OF TWO-PLOW TRACTOR,
HERE USED IN THRESHING 208

TRACTOR BINDER, A ONE-MAN HARVESTING OUTFIT OP
ERATING WITH POWER TAKE-OFF 208

THE HARVESTER-THRESHER IN THE ARGENTINE 214

PICK-UP DEVICE ATTACHED TO A HARVESTER-THKKSHKR
IN A WESTERN CANADA WHEAT-FIELD 214

FARMALL TRACTORS CULTIVATING COTTON AND PICKING
CORN 220

TYPICAL FARM-IMPLEMENT DEALERS* STORES ON THE
CANADIAN FRONTIER AND IN THE DEVELOPED SOUTH
WEST 242

HEAT TREATING DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL
MOTOR-TRUCK WORKS, FORT WAYNE, INDIANA 270

FRONT YARD OF THE McCoRMiot WORKS, CHICAGO 270

FLEET OF HARVESTER-THRESHERS IN A KANSAS WHEAT-
FIELD HARVESTING Six HUNDRED AND FORTY ACHES A
DAY 284

THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

THE CENTURY OF
THE REAPER

CHAPTER I
THE INVENTION OF THE REAPER

MODERN agriculture was born in Virginia on a hot July
day in 1831. There is no written record of what took place
on that momentous occasion. Even the exact date is lost
in the maze of unwritten history. But on that afternoon
Cyrus Hall McCormick demonstrated to a skeptical but
needy world that his work was worthy.

It is hardly to be assumed that the world beyond the
Valley of Virginia was excited or eager, or that a huge
crowd gathered to witness the trial of the first reaper or to
speculate upon its future. Great events are quietly born.
Inferentially we may guess that the inventor s parents,
his sisters and his young brothers had driven down the
Valley from their home. His father, who had spent so
many years trying in vain to build a reaper, may have
hoped for success for the boy, but he feared that the
problem would prove insolvable. His mother stood a little
apart, lovingly proud of her tall son whether his reaper
worked or not, ready with comfort or praise or renewed
encouragement. Jo Anderson was there, the Negro slave
who, through the crowded hours of the recent weeks, had
helped build the reaper. There were also harvesters, men
who had been toiling in the adjacent fields and had laid
down their scythes and sickles to come and watch the

2 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

new-fangled wheat-cutting machine. They knew a better
way: they could inch their way through a field of ripe
grain, swinging forward in a long line, swinging their
heavy blades into the tough stalks while behind them the
binders bowed and rose and bowed again. What traffic
should they have with a harvesting machine? They and
the generations of their fathers before them had learned
how to labor with their hands.

Perhaps also there may have been a covered wagon
passing, as a much later engraving illustrating the event
shows, but if this was not actual, it was at least symbolic.
Westward, beyond the sunset, lay the prairies; and those
emigrants, who from their wagon thus casually watched
the world s first reaper work for the first time, may well
have carried away with them word to the empty spaces to
prepare for a golden yield of grain. The machine which
was to give the prairies the vigor of use was being born.

The reaper marched through the grain. A boy rode the
single horse. Jo Anderson walked beside it, rake in hand,
to keep the platform clean of severed grain. And behind
it strode the young inventor, Tall, square-shouldered,
high of brow, purposeful, wise before his time, sensing but
not yet seeing the future, determined, feeling the power
of destiny within him - Cyrus Hall MeCormick paced
after his reaper. He turned neither to the right nor left;
he was unconscious of the little crowd or the magnificence
of his accomplishment* He watched his reaper work.

The hazy hills of Virginia were green with dense
woods. Back of them were blue mountain ranges which
even now are still the chief beauty of the Valley* To-day
that field is almost unrecognisable. A concrete highway
passes through it, a gasoline filling station occupies a
corner where a side roacl leads away to Walnut Grove
farm, and humming telegraph wires mar the primitive

THE INVENTION OF THE REAPER 3

charm of the landscape. Except for John Steele s Tavern,
part of which still stands, the rush of modern times has
tried to blot out history; but the fact of accomplishment
lives on. As I have stood there, the place has seemed in
very truth a field of destiny.

Quietly, unostentatiously, a great deed was passing into
actuality. Big things are simple, and those deeds which
ring in the consciousness of later generations are too fre
quently unheralded by the times they call their own.
Cyrus Hall McCormick s initial step into history went
unnoticed in 1831, but it had been prepared by the subtle
planning of unerring destiny.

It would be a fruitless effort to seek to assess the value
to the modern world of the great pioneer inventors who,
by sheer force of intellect, freed men from toil and gave
them hope. Their names are spread upon the annals of
half a century. Many of them were so eminent that they
would each alone have secmecl the crowning genius of an
epoch. Their work is most significant when its results
are considered in relation to each other and to their times,

Stcphenson in England and Fulton in America em
ployed the known principle of steam and made it useful
for transportation on land and water. Morse invented the
telegraph. McCormick built the reaper and transmuted
farming from drudgery into efficiency. Whitney s cotton
gin made that volume production of cotton possible
which created a world-wide industry. Howe s sewing ma
chine brought women relief from endless toil throughout
civilization. Bessemer invented a process and immedi
ately steel became available for all men. And yet we must
admit that transportation would have remained a pleas
ant but unnecessary luxury unless there had been grain
and cotton to carry from the country to the city. The
reaper would have been purposeless if industry had been

4 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

unable to absorb the farm labor it released. Machinery in
the modern form could not have existed but for steel. In
truth, the elements of progress are correlated and inter
dependent.

Inventions are the product of need. That need may
exist simply because people desire something; but it is
prof ounder if there is a sound economic reason for its exist
ence. Behind the great inventors of the first half of the
nineteenth century lay the most powerful sanction of
economic necessity. This was so to a remarkable degree
in the case of the reaper. Before Cyrus Hall McCormick s
time, agriculture struggled along with the same means and
methods that were in vogue when history dawned. If the
rest of civilization could have suddenly become modern
while agriculture remained in the slough of inefficiency,
the economic results would have been disastrous*

The population of the United States, for example, was
about thirteen million in 1831, Three-quarters of these
people lived in the country. Sixty years later, when the
population had risen to sixty-three million, over half of the
people lived in the cities, and nearly twenty million peo
ple had been assimilated into urban life who, but for the
reaper and its heirs, would have been absolutely required
on the farms to produce food for the multitude, Indus
try was able to claim its share of them and to give them
productive jobs* What if the need of the farms for labor
had withheld them? Machine industry could not have ex
isted; our Nation s industrial prosperity would have died
unborn ; we could never have become strong and rich and
materially triumphant. Farming is our basic industry,
and, had there been a clash of interest between the cities
and the country, the former would have had to be served.
Men must eat; but to do so they would have had to forgo
the benefits of industry if there had been no reaper.

THE INVENTION OF THE REAPER 5

As a matter of fact, agriculture had hardly been able
during all its history to keep abreast of the demands of ant
increasing world population for food. Very recently we
have seen how disaster could overwhelm Russia when the
balance of agriculture was dislocated. In 1921, Russian
farms were practically devoid of agricultural equipment.
Farming had returned to the epoch of the mattock and
the hoe. There arose differences between the interests of
the cities and the country. The peasants stopped produc
ing food, even for themselves. People were starving by
millions. In our own times famine stalks through a land
as soon as food production fails.

Such things can happen all too easily, even without the
confusion of political controversy. There was widespread
famine in Europe as late as 1816. There were bread riots
in New York in 1837. Before the development of trans
portation, a locality which suffered from bad weather at
the time of harvest would almost certainly face famine
before the next winter was over : starving peasants might
emigrate to another district if they had strength to escape,
but, when their own fields failed them, they could not
bring in their bread. The plagues of Egypt are a Biblical
record of adverse climatic conditions and insufficient
crops. Man can live without comforts and clothes and
houses, can even continue a sort of existence without
happiness but he must have food. Always until the
advent of farm machinery the problem of food meant the
wretchedness of dreary toil and the despair of uncertainty
and fear.

Population and famine are matters which affect the
many, whereas labor bears directly on the individual who
experiences it. Labor is not disheartening or degrading
when it is worthy, but such toil as that known to Euro
pean peasants was little better than slavery. The labor

6 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

which free American farmers of the early nineteenth
century performed in their fields was no less physically
taxing. The soil was prepared with a primitive plow,
seeding and cultivating were done by hand, reaping was
accomplished by the sickle and the scythe, or at most by
the cradle. Crops were produced by sunshine and by rain
and by the straining muscles of weary men,

To appreciate the force of the stirring circumstances
that kept pace with Cyrus Hall MeCormick throughout
his life, it is necessary to know that he was of Scotch-Irish
ancestry* His blood was the same as that which dared
to fight and suffer for the Scotch covenant of faith and
which, transplanted to Ireland, made Ulster prosperous.
When the British armies pursued the exiles to Ireland, a
full half-million of them emigrated to America. Broken in
fortune but whole in spirit, they brought with them an
inheritance of liberty, of industry, and of conscience sym
pathetic toward the growing ideals of the New World

One of these Scotch-Irishmen was Thomas McCormick,
who came to America in 1 734. His son Robert moved from
Pennsylvania to Virginia and later fought in the War for
Independence. Robert s son, who was to become the
father of Cyrus, was also named Robert. In 1808, he
married Mary Ann Hall, a true daughter of the faith-
spurred, embattled Scotch-Irish strain. Thus Cyrus 1 an
cestry had clone its best to prosper him by providing him
a subconscious store of courage and faith and persever
ance and vision such as few people have proved them
selves worthy to hold,

Before they were expelled from Ulster, these people
exhibited a skill at labor that has left the north of Ireland
prosperous even to this day. They were among the most
industrious, moral, and intelligent groups of people in
Britain, They were fine fanners, skilled weavers, con-

THE INVENTION OF THE REAPER 7

structive builders; and when they came to America, they
carried their arts and their tools and their energies with
them. The first Robert McCormick was a weaver as well
as a farmer. Patrick Hall, Mary Ann s father, was a
leader of that strict Presbyterianism which thought that
even hymn music was out of place in the kirk. Robert,
the father of Cyrus, was an educated, prosperous land
owner, who, besides his farms, operated gristmills, saw
mills, a smelter, a distillery, and a blacksmith shop. He
was a reader and a student, gentle but energetic, an active
churchman, and was wide in his interests. His mechani
cal ingenuity made him an indefatigable inventor. Also,
perhaps, he was something of a dreamer. Cyrus mother
was imaginative, more constructively ambitious than her
husband; shrewd, and imbued with the typical Scotch-
Irish desire to improve herself and the world around her.
Cyrus inherited all these qualities from his ancestors and
to them he added an indomitable will that transcended
the stubbornness of his race. The Scotch-Irish inheritance
and the characters of his mother and father were all
blended in his being. But men to be great must acid
something to the mental equipment with which they are
born. These qualities in his case were : will to drive through
the present and imagination to see through to the future.

Cyrus Hall McCormick was born February 15, 1809,
on the family farm, Walnut Grove, in Rockbridge County,
Virginia. There was no public fanfare over the event, but
the star of destiny must have been shining brightly.
That was a great year for the world. Poe and Tennyson,
Chopin and Mendelssohn, Darwin, Gladstone, and great
Lincoln were born then and McCormick, if he may be
judged by his services to humanity, is none too small a
man to share their birth-year.

As a boy, Cyrus went to the Old Field School. It is not

8 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

recorded how he progressed in the Three R s, the Shorter
Catechism, and the Bible, but there is a tale to the effect
that he astounded his teacher by constructing an accurate
hemispherical map of the world. When he was fifteen, he
found that his boyish physique was insufficient to swing a
heavy cradle in the harvest grain; so he made a smaller
implement to suit his slight muscles.

At eighteen, he made himself some needed surveying
instruments. Of greater importance was his invention of
a hillside plow, his first major contribution to modern
agriculture. It is also certain that he was in constant at
tendance on his father s labor in the blacksmith shop.
Perhaps throughout his youth he felt stirring in himself
the inquiring, earnest urge to create, which the natural
unrestraint of life in America made possible. The great
inventions of those times were the product of social and
mental vigor as well as of economic necessity.

Between 1809 and 1816, Robert McCormick made the
first of several attempts to build a mechanical reaper.
Like the devices of others who had interested themselves
in the problem, his machine was pushed ahead into the
grain by two horses and the wheat was to be thrust against
stationary convex sickles by rapidly revolving beaters.
Unfortunately, it utterly failed to cut the grain, so Robert
abandoned it. At various times during the next fifteen
years, he made other fruitless attempts to revive his
scheme. His eldest son was informed as to his ideas and
may have helped him prepare his last machine for its un
successful trial in May, 1831. It actually cut some green
wheat fairly well. But previous inventors had already
succeeded in doing this, though no one had been able to
handle the wheat after the cutting. Robert s machine
flung it away from his knives in a matted tangle of straw.
The problem was too difficult for him.

THE INVENTION OF THE REAPER 9

There are many family legends how Cyrus helped his
father with this last machine, and how, in the same year,
1831, Robert encouraged his son toward the reaper that
was so soon to turn a page of history. The probability,
however, is that the younger man had little contact with
Robert s efforts except to profit by his father s failures.
Without question he learned from them what pitfalls to
avoid. Robert s work inspired his son s interest in the
problem of mechanical harvesting, and the father s fine
craftsmanship taught Cyrus to work with tools. In the
farm blacksmith shop he found an outlet for the ideas
germinating within him.

Cyrus must have started on his own machine as soon as
he saw the evidence of his father s admitted failure. Be
tween May and July, he conceived his own new principles,
built one or more models, and developed a machine which
cut grain successfully. He found within his heart the
vigor necessary to do this colossal task inside of six short
weeks.

Without doubt his experiments were aided by the fact
that from his boyhood he had been engaged in practical
farming* He knew that it would serve no useful purpose
to provide a machine that would cut grain only under
ideal conditions. Wheat beaten down by rain or tangled
by wind was an ever-present problem. The straw might
be damp or dry. Harvest is a necessity dictated by Na
ture, not a holiday planned by man. Perhaps, even, he
was served by the fact that he was so entirely ignorant of
previous reaper investigations in other parts of the world.
His mind was fresh. He did not know that for years many
men had been toiling to solve the problem of the reaper,
or that before his time many futile reaper patents had
been issued in England and America. He had never
heard of Pitt s work nearly fifty years before, nor of Bell

10 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

and Ogle, nor did he know of Manning who had already
patented certain of the features he was to discover for
himself and incorporate in his own machine. His sole ex
perience was with his father s unsuccessful attempt; his
prime asset was the power of his own tremendous will
driving his imagination on to accomplishment*

It is not strange that no news of these other men had
sifted through to him. In these clays of instant and con
stant communication, it is difficult to imagine the isola
tion of that truly backwoods community in the Virginia
mountains. There were no railroads, no canals, nothing
but clay roads leading to the peopled centers of the State.
The Scotch-Irish people of the neighborhood were self-
sufficient in every way ; they neither knew nor cared about
the outside world. And yet Cyrus brain had overleaped
the blue ridges, had grappled with problems as to which
he had only local experience, had flown out to speculate on
a world-wide need. He had the soul of greatness within
him, he possessed that genius which lifts the giants of
history above the world of average men.

He set to work in the old log blacksmith shop, cutting
and fashioning wood and bending into shape the few iron
pieces of the machine. His first reaper was built in six
weeks at most. He tried it out privately in an adjacent
wheatfiekl on the farm, with none but the members of his
family for spectators. Becoming convinced that he was
on the right road, he set to work feverishly to remodel it
for a public test- The initial machine of early July had a
straight-edged reciprocating knife actuated by gears from
a main wheel, a platform extending sideways from the
wheel, shafts for a single horse, an outside divider to
separate the standing grain from that to be gathered into
the cutter bar, and fingers to project in front of the blade.
The late July machine had an improved divider, a better

THE BLACKSMITH SUOI> OF WALNUT (JROVK FARM IN

WiriCII Mc-CORMICK BUILT HIS RICAI KR IN 1 83 1

The shop still stands

THE INVENTION OF THE REAPER 11

cutter bar provided with saw-tooth, incised serrations
along its leading edge, and a reel to hold the grain in front
of the knife.

During his work Cyrus was encouraged by his mother
who adored him and by his father who, though he may
have despaired because of his own failure, could not but
have thrilled as he saw his son s machine grow piece by
piece. The boy s courage and tenacity gave him hope.
Two particular friends watched the reaper develop. One
of these was Colonel James McDowell, who shared
Cyrus optimism. The other, Captain William Massie,
was a skeptic until the success of the first trial, after which
he became so enthusiastic that when times grew hard for
the inventor he opened his purse to him. Most of all, the
name of his Negro helper, Jo Anderson, deserves honor as
the man who worked beside him in the building of the
reaper. Jo Anderson was a slave, a general farm laborer
and a friend. Cyrus never spared his own fine physique
by day or by night; and the Negro toiled with him up to
the hour of the test and after. It is pleasant to know that
in later times, when old Jo s productive days were over,
Cyrus or his son provided for his declining years.

McCormick s contribution to the well-being of the
world was real. Men needed him. However much we may
pride ourselves on our modernity, we are still too prone to
put our sole faith in the test of use. Even now, in spite of
our worship of new deeds, we still let genius frighten us,
We love to place our reliance on the tried and true methods
other men before us have proved to be secure. We are
served by the fact that some few men, like Cyrus Hall
McCormick, are brave enough to look ahead and wonder.

We of to-day pay too little attention to the work of
those early men who labored that we may live. We wear
too boldly the garments of experience, and fail to realize

12 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

how much we owe to the pavSt, however unprogressive it
may seem. Five thousand years ago in Egypt, agriculture
was the leading industry of a civilization which was just
dawning. The early Egyptian knew how to grow cotton
for his clothes, and grain and legumes for his food, lie had
found out, furthermore, how to breed plants to better
their variety, and he understood the seasons. It is even
possible that he had a dim perception of crop rotation.
Doubtless he thought himself up-to-date.

But such farm tools as he had were rudimentary in the
extreme. Mostly, they were made of wood, for metal was
still rare enough to be preserved for weapons or for carv
ing stone. The first garden tool of prehistoric man was
probably nothing more than a crooked stick with which
he picked and hacked at the soil until it was broken and
pulverized enough for planting* But In Egypt, some one
had already invented the rudimentary spade or hoe, the
familiar wood plow, and the reaping hook. When the har
vest was ready, the Egyptian reaped his grain with the
curved blade which some brilliant mind had discovered
would cut so much more easily than a straight knife. The
very first invention of an agricultural implement may
well have been the primitive plow, which could be pulled
through the ground by slaves or draft animals. How
ever rudimentary it may have been, it lightened some
what the farmer s labor- Even at that early (late, our
ancestors were interesting themselves in finding out how
to accomplish desired results with less effort.

Agriculture was vital to Egyptian prosperity. There
was little game in the surrounding desert. Cattle ancl the
increasing numbers of a growing population had to be fed.
The first recorded trading expeditions to the outside world
brought back tiger skins and ostrich plumes to adorn the
reigning sovereign, but they also brought back new plants

THE INVENTION OF THE REAPER 13

for the farms of Egypt. However crude the tools of agri
cultural production may have been, it is interesting to
note that they were important enough in the minds of
Egyptians to cause the adoption of both the plow and the
reaping hook as symbols in the first alphabet.

I well remember when one day, some twenty years ago,
I was standing by an Egyptian obelisk trying to puzzle
out the meaning of the ancient hieroglyphics carved on its
granite sides. I was particularly interested in the con
ventionalized symbol of a plow. All at once there arose a
great clatter of straining animals and shouting men. I
saw a team of white oxen drawing a plow, tilling the field
around the obelisk. I looked from the fifteenth-century
B.C. hieroglyphic to the twentieth-century A.D. plow and
back again. They were identical: thirty- three hundred
years had passed, but agricultural machinery had stood
still. Egypt was preparing its soil as it had done in the
days of the Pharaohs. A whole world of progress had
been born in the meantime. Plato, Archimedes, Caesar,
Galileo, Newton, Darwin, had lived and died. The West
ern nations had passed into the most modern epoch.
But agriculture, in Egypt at least, had remained un
changed and unchanging while the world moved on.

It is not necessary to look to Egypt to find examples of
the slight growth of agriculture before 1831. The peas
ants of Europe, even as late as the eighteenth century,
were serfs of the soil. The fact that a mediaeval manu
script may show an illustration of an isolated attempt to
construct a wagon-box grain drill does not mean that men
employed usable machinery. However much social life
was enriched by sculptured churches or the neo-classic
literature of the Renaissance or the songs of the trouba
dours, or the rising political strength of England, agricul
turists still lived a life of dreary toil. Wooden plows they

14 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

had, but seeding, cultivating, harvesting, and threshing
all depended on the muscular energy of two-legged beasts
of burden called men.

ik The primitive methods of olden times survive even to
this day in isolated or backward communities. The Pueblo
Indians of New Mexico and Arizona have modern plows
and other agricultural implements, it is true, but they
put reliance in the prayer-dances of their forefathers.
Rice in Java and in much of China is raised by methods
that have not changed since history began. The walls
of irrigation terraces are built with a clumsy hoe, the
rice is planted by hand, and it is reaped with a little
knife as long as your finger. The Indians of our own
Southwest and the natives of the Orient produce their
crops mainly by trust in Nature and the muscular effort
of bent backs.

In all the centuries before 1831 , there had been invented
but two new agricultural implements for harvesting, the
scythe in the sixteenth century and the cradle in the
eighteenth. This was a large scythe with wooden fingers
fastened to the back of the blade in such a way that the
cut grain fell on them and was deposited in a swath on
the ground. The cradle was heavier than the scythe,
and, except as certain skilled harvesters learned to swing
it with a rhythm corresponding to the momentum of its
weight, harder to use successfully. But the grain fell from
it in regular rows instead of the tangled, scattered bunches
left by the scythes; so when the binders came along they
could make better speed.

At the best, though, harvest was a period of drudgery,
A long line of crouching men stooping across a field, a
scorching sun beating on their backs, arms swinging heavy
knives into tough grain, muscles tensing to lift and drop
burdens, slaves of fear struggling to avert famine > this

THE INVENTION OF THE REAPER 15

was what harvest labor meant to farmers before the age
of machinery. Such heartbreaking effort was nothing
more than sodden drudgery. Obviously, it may have been
spiritually possible for a farmer to fix his attention so
keenly upon bread, the object for which he was striving,
that he could keep ahead of weariness ; but how many of
us are mentally detached enough to forget our own mis
eries? Labor is honorable; labor in combination with
thought is an inspiration. But toil without hope is de
grading, and work so exhausting that it cripples a man s
body saps his brain as well.

Cyrus Hall McCormick was a Virginia farmer. Such
speculation upon the historical background of relief from
toil lay beyond his Scotch-Irish ken. However much he
may have realized in later life the importance of his inven
tion, in 1831 he knew nothing more than that harvest
labor was too hard. His was the part of striving that
other men might rest.

The historic little shop where he built the first success
ful reaper is standing to-day. It is a small square log
building on a high stone foundation. Inside is the forge,
a littered workbench, the hewn section of a tree, and
the old stone anvil. There is one small window, and two
doors. The walls and ceiling are black with the smoke of
a thousand fires. Old walnut trees stand beside the shop
and cast their shadows impartially over the past and into
the future. Not far away is the homestead, a chaste brick
building with the pleasing, provincial lines of a sincere
architecture. Tall trees hang over the house and flower
beds surround it for Mary Ann Hall McCormick, her
son said in later years, was a skilled gardener. Beyond
the lawns a wide field dips down into a hollow and then
climbs up to a wooded height. In the distance arc the
misty summits of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In sum-

16 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

mer, when the sun is pouring into the Valley and over the
nodding heads of yellow wheat, the scene is very peaceful,
very beautiful just as, doubtless, it was on that July
day of 1831.

That was a day when famine was ordered from the land
and the drudgery of old agriculture was banished. But
when I stand there after the passing of a century, my
mind is content to dwell on the inventor, on the man. I
am aware of the great facts that now farmers all over
the world are directing machinery instead of spending
muscle, and that there is bread for the multitude and a
sure relief from famine. But as I contemplate these bene
fits, I see a boy reach out his hand to unlock the future.
Hope buoys him, though he is weary. Hour after hour,
day after day, far into the night he has been working,
carving wood and hammering iron, planning and schem
ing, creating. Perhaps for a moment he looks up from his
bench. Beyond the smithy window is a field of ripe grain.
He smiles: he is ready. His reaper clatters on into his
tory. He strides after it along the broad highway of
service to humanity*

CHAPTER II
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INVENTION

THE significance of the 1831 test of the original reaper
is not that Cyrus Hall McCormick s machine cut grain.
Judging from the harvest standards of to-day, it is cer
tain that it did not perform perfectly. But then, for
the first time in all history, a mechanical reaper cut
grain and at the same time included in its being the
fundamental elements essential to proper harvesting.
Whatever the present world has since added to the
science of agricultural equipment, no modern grain-
cutting machine can suffice without the elements around
which Cyru$ Hall McCormick s reaper was organized.
These essential principles were seven :

The straight reciprocating knife, whereby the
standing grain would be attacked by lateral motion
as well as. by the forward movement of the machine.
(This the inventor himself regarded as the most
vital of the elements.)

The fingers or guards for the knife, which sup
ported the grain at the moment of cutting.

The reel, which gathered the grain in front of the
reaper and held the heads in place as the fingers
held the stalks.

The platform, on which the severed grain might
fall to be raked away in a swath.

The main wheel, directly behind the horse, which
carried the machine and operated gears to actuate
the moving parts.

The principle of cutting to one side of the line of

18 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

draft, which permitted the horse to walk on the
stubble while the cutter bar worked in the standing
grain.

The divider at the outer end of the cutter bar, to
divide the standing grain from that which was to be
reaped.

In 1831 and for several years thereafter, Cyrus had
not the slightest idea that he was not the sole and origi
nal discoverer of every one of these cardinal elements.
Actually he initiated them all independently and alone.
But it is possible to find suggestions made by previous
inventors which closely resemble individual parts of the
McCormick machine. These prior suggestions were in
no case parts of an operative reaper. They were theoret
ical constructions, many of which were never tried in the
field. In the case of six of Cyrus elements he was un
consciously duplicating the prior discoveries of other
inventors. The principle of the single main wheel alone
was absolutely original with him. Nevertheless, even if
there had been no originality in any of the seven features,
his reaper was still a true invention. It is a well settled
rule of patent law that an invention need actually be no
more than a new combination of kncwn features to pro
duce a novel and useful result and be a true discovery.

The seven elements which were now for the first time
included in one device were the result of that practical
genius which we call invention. They seem simple be
cause they are so really great. Obviously, as time wore
on, each one of them coulcl be improved upon, and other
principles were to be added to the list. Nevertheless,
each one of the seven is to be found in machines that now
harvest grain, even in the combined harvester-thresher
of 1931. A century of progress has passed, but the

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INVENTION 19

original features live on, the old truths remain. Grain
binders are now pulled by a tractor, where the first reaper
was dragged along by a single horse. Their mechanistic
speed is more than that of the first crude implement, their
endurance is greater because of the smooth polish of
bearings whose steel had not even been invented a short
hundred years ago, their service is better because of
the wider knowledge of the protagonists of modern
machinery.

Cyrus Hall McCormick would have been the first to
admit that his reaper of 1831 was no more than a begin
ning. To think that any invention, at any time or place,
springs full-grown and complete from the mind of man
is an egregious error. An inventor s second guess is
usually better than his first; and, if he has the genius to
conceive the first step, he must, if he is really great, have
also the critical judgment to see wherein his work falls
short of perfection. Thus, Cyrus was not even satisfied
enough with his effort to patent it until 1834, nor did he
begin to seek a market for it until 1840.

After a journey to Kentucky in his father s interests,
he returned to Walnut Grove in the spring of 1832 and
set to work to improve his original reaper. With new
fingers, an adjustable platform, and improved gearing,
the machine again faced the ordeal of public trial at
Lexington. But the owner of the field was not pleased
when too much grain was knocked off and fell on the
ground. He ordered Cyrus and his reaper off. One
William Taylor, the owner of an adjoining stand of grain,
pulled down the intervening rail fence and invited the
young man to continue the demonstration. Some cradle-
wielding laborers jeered, but during the afternoon the
reaper harvested six acres of wheat. A school principal
pompously announced that the reaper was worth a

20 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

hundred thousand dollars, whereupon Cyrus dryly re
marked that he would gladly sell it for half as much. But
the machine was accorded the honor of exhibition in the
courthouse square.

The experiments continued during 1833. Cyrus built
another, larger reaper, and with it and the 1832 model
he cut the Walnut Grove grain as well as the wheat of
several neighbors. His patron, McDowell, even bought
a machine, but this may have been nothing more than a
friendly gesture, for it was later returned. A newspaper
article describing its success around Lexington carried
the reaper s fame abroad* This article and certain
farmers testimonials which were included were reprinted
in other periodicals, even in far-away New York, For the
first time McCormick s renown and the story of his
accomplishment went out into the world* Even a quiet
Virginia valley is not too distant a birthplace for the
kind of greatness that is universal.

The reaper was patented in 1834. It seems that Cyrus
did not yet wish to take so conclusive a step, and he ob
viously had no desire to seek a commercial market for a
device which he still regarded as imperfect. But In April
he saw in a magazine a picture of a reaper patented the
previous autumn by Obed Hussey. Here was a rival, and
without doubt McCormick desired to establish the fact
of his own priority and protect his interests. So he
applied for and was granted a patent.

But even so, Cyrus knew that his work was by no
means done. Farmers would write glowing testimonials
about the reaper, but they would not buy. Friends
sought him out to advise him to apply his active brain
to something else. Who would have blamed him if he
had become discouraged? He did not weaken, yet for a
time he laid the reaper aside and gave his energy to

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INVENTION 21

assisting in the development of certain of his father s
inventions, such as a threshing machine and a hemp-
brake. Also, he may have resumed the promotion of his
own early hillside plows. He had advertised and sold some
of these as early as 1831, and it probably seemed more re
munerative at the moment to engage in this reasonably
sure commerce than to go on pushing the adoption of the
reaper. As a matter of fact, the hills and valleys of his
neighborhood made too many fields ill-suited to a reaper.

In addition to work in the shop, he began to operate on
his own account a farm his father had given him. He used
his machines in his harvesting, but he had no time to
develop them nor was he encouraged to do so. Even
Robert grew skeptical of the commercial value of the
reaper, and advised him to stick to the surer emoluments
of farming. But Cyrus could not forget mechanics and
invention. He secured the aid of his father and a neighbor
to build a furnace and engage in making pig iron. For a
while he prospered, but by 1839 the effects of the panic
of 1837 bore down on his little industry. Father and son
were wiped out in the collapse of the price of iron. Half
of their land went to their creditors, the rest was mort
gaged, and nothing remained but the reaper patent which
nobody wanted.

During these difficult years there developed a beautiful
intimacy and a complete understanding between father
and son. Robert s fine mind and his possibly impractical,
speculative curiosity was transmuted in Cyrus into prac
tical determination and constructive logic, Robert s
reaper had been unsuccessful, whereas Cyrus cut grain.
The young man was an energetic driver; the older was a
dreamer who, with any other than Scotch-Irish ancestry,
might have been a mystic. And yet, however different
they may have been, they were glad to work side by side

22 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

in a common cause. Because the father could not be
sanguine of the commercial value of his son s reaper,
Cyrus worked to perfect Robert s ideas; because Cyrus
could not confine the active power of his mind within a
limited field, Robert helped him into business. In later
years when the reaper was beginning to be more of a
success, the inventor regarded his father as something
more than a partner. They achieved a firm friendship
out of their relationship. When Robert died, Cyrus for
the first time in his busy life felt the numbing shock of
utter aloneness.

After the pig-iron disaster, Cyrus resurrected his old
machines and, this time under the pressure of imminent
bankruptcy, resumed the work that was to fill his life.
He had discovered on his own farm that the reaper s most
serious defect was in the cutting apparatus. Now he
turned his particular attention to the edge of the knife.
Where the original reaper had been equipped with a knife,
on the front edge of which serrations had been cut all
running on the same diagonal, the machines built after
1840 were provided with groups of serrations opposed
one to the other that is to say, they ran to the right
for an inch and a half, then to the left for a similar dis
tance, then to the right, and so on. The present type of
cutter bar, with separate, riveted-on cutting sections,
was not developed until 1851.

In 1840, also, Cyrus made his first real reaper sales.
The tottering family finances made it necessary for him
to get an income from his invention. He sold one reaper
to a farmer who rode in from the northern part of the
State and one to a man from the James River district.
Yet it is on record that he also refused to sell a third
which would have been doomed to failure because it
would have to operate in drenched grain. The two

CYRUS HALL McCORMlTK IN IMS THIRTIES
From a daguerreotype

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INVENTION 23

machines sold did not work well ; so he spent the harvest
period of 1841 in private experiments. By the next year
he had so improved the cutting efficiency of the knife by
changing the angle of the serrations that he was able to
sell seven reapers in 1842. The volume of sales rose to
twenty-nine in 1843 and to fifty in 1844. The price of the
reaper was one hundred dollars.

Newspaper articles began to be printed about the
reaper and usually they were favorable to the new mech
anism. The statement was published abroad that it
would save half the cost of harvesting. One of McCor-
mick s machines with eight men to bind could reap as
much as five scythemen and ten helpers. Also, there
was less loss through shattered grain than with the
swinging cradle. If the machine were well made, the
principle proved its soundness.

All the early machines were built in the blacksmith
shop on the Walnut Grove farm. Cyrus had no other
factory. He not only had to supervise such workmen as
he employed, but he must himself do any work that
required particular care, To sell his product, he had to
ride for miles and days over mountain roads. He had
to learn to watch credits and supervise collections. He
alone could secure materials, arrange for drayage to the
nearest canal, do all those things that now require the
services of department heads and organization. That
was in truth the age of individualism !

It was also in 1843 that his famous controversy with
Obed Hussey began. Hussey, it will be remembered, had
been granted a patent on a reaper in 1833. He was a
whimsical sailor whose hobby it was to work at mechani
cal problems. It is said that a friend asked him why he
did not make a reaper. What/ said Hussey, isn t there
such a thing? and forthwith set out to invent one.

24 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

When he succeeded and had patented his device, he sold
reapers in the district around his home in Cincinnati. On
hearing of the Hussey patent, Cyrus published a warning
not to infringe on an already occupied field. Hussey,
nevertheless, invaded the East, established himself at
Baltimore, and challenged McCormick to a field test.
The temper of the competition may be judged from a
letter which Cyrus wrote a few years later to his brother,
when he said, Meet Hussey in Maryland and put him
down

However many reaper makers there were a few years
later, Hussey and McCormick were then alone in the
field. Each claimed the advantage of priority and su
perior performance. Each bombarded the press with
praises of his own machine and scathing comments on
the futility of the rival device. Yet finally when they
met the result was inconclusive, Hussey s reaper was
smaller and would not operate in wet grain. McCor-
mick s was manifestly stronger, but broke clown when he
became too sanguine of its ability to perform unnecessary
tasks. They both finished the test, and the judges de
cided narrowly in favor of McCormick. Spectators
stated, however, that Hussey s machine was simpler,
which may very well have been true, since it was not
equipped with the essential features of the reel and
divider. It was really the progenitor of the modern
mower.

Subsequent investigation proved Hussey s patent to
be sound and not in conflict with McCormick s. Many
years later, when he had retired from competition, he
won damages for an infringement against the shape of his
finger guards. Hussey s reaper was more of a factor in
newspaper debate than in the field, but for a long time
he pursued Cyrus and annoyed him with charge and

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INVENTION 25

countercharge. But however bitter a critic Hussey was,
he was an honest old warrior. He invariably refused to
equip his reaper with a reel because he had not himself
invented one. He opposed Cyrus patents frantically,
but when he heard the incontrovertible evidence of the
public exhibitions of 1831 and 1832, he startled the exam
iners by flatly admitting his rival s priority.

In those early days of American business, competition
meant warfare to the bitter end. There was no quarter
given or expected. Men fought for their rights or lost
them. Hussey was a picturesque debater, but he was no
business man. He sold a certain number of his ma
chines, particularly along the Atlantic seaboard, and
he even competed abroad in later years. But he could
never stand against the business genius which Cyrus was
soon to add to his inventive faculty.

The early inventors are hardly to be blamed for so
bitterly contesting each advantage they could claim.
They were so much alone, they had so much to do, and
the commercial prize ahead of them seemed so limited.
McCormick had one great quality Hussey did not share :
he had vision to see far beyond the horizon of Virginia.
In 1844, he sold reapers in New York, Tennessee, Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri, as well as
in his home country. The West was calling and he
answered.

As soon as the Virginia harvest of that year was over,
the inventor decided to investigate for himself the West
ern States from which the unexpected business was trick
ling in. He traveled to New York, and then on through
Wisconsin, Illinois, into Missouri, and back to Ohio. He
was astounded at the expanse of wide fields he saw, so
different from the narrower valleys of his home. His
imagination was challenged. He wrote to his family

26 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

that reapers were luxuries in Virginia, but were necessi
ties in Ohio, Illinois, and on the great plains of the West.
He understood immediately that inland Virginia would
never do as a center from which to distribute his machines
to farms along the Mississippi River. From Indiana he
wrote, *It seems wrong to pay $20 or $25 freight...
when they might be made in the West considering,
too, the greater uncertainty of shipping/

He began immediately to contemplate the thought of
moving his entire business to some place in the West, He
did not have to look back many years to the time when
men of his own kind, Scotch- Irish pioneers, had moved
across the frontier and out into the wilderness. What
they had done in their field of endeavor, he could do in
his. They had battled with the unknown to return and
bring back with them tales of virgin soil and unlimited
horizons. He and his reaper could follow in aid of the
brave settler-crusaders who had pressed on into the
plains just behind the explore.

In preparation for the ultimate move to Chicago, he
went to Brockport, New York, on the Eric Canal, and
sold a license to manufacture reapers to Seymour and
Morgan. He sent his brother Leander, now a young man
of twenty-eight and able to fit himself into the growing
business, to Cincinnati after making a similar contract.
This enlarged production allowed a greater volume of
sales; so he himself and such county agents as he had
appointed sold 123 machines in 1845, The next year
his sales mounted still further. In 1847, he moved to
Chicago,

In the meantime his interest in improving his machine
had never waned. It had passed the experimental stage
in that the reaper would unquestionably cut grain suc
cessfully. He secured two other patents, one in 1845 and

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INVENTION 27

one in 1847, and the wooden implement of the thirties
became McCormick s Patent Virginia Reaper, a two-
horse machine with a wider cut and a seat at the side
whereon the raker sat as he worked. In 1848, he applied
for an extension of his original patent.

It will be remembered that the original McCormick
patent was granted in 1834. This patent ran for fourteen
years, but as no attempt had been made to exploit it
even in a small way until 1840, the inventor had enjoyed
no more than eight years of protection. During that
time, he testified in the patent hearing which followed,
he had sold 778 machines at a profit of $20 each and had
disposed of territorial sales rights for a total gross profit
of $22,643. But the Brockport licensees, Seymour and
Morgan, felt that their profits would be larger if the ex
tension were refused and the patent was free ; and they
had strong political influence. They fostered a cleverly
organized counter-campaign of farmer publicity.

The story of the patent battle which followed would
fill a volume. Hussey and McCormick were again
aligned against each other; patent attorneys wrote to
farmers to rise against the royalty charge of the reaper
monopoly; the farm press was filled with columns of
arguments; petitions were circulated indiscriminately.
The patent board rejected McCormick s application, and
it was said that his invention was of too much value to
the public to remain in private hands. He caused the
matter to be taken to Congress, where the case became a
can^e c&ttbre. An anti-McCormick lobby was organized,
public opinion in New York was fostered by the Brock-
port manufacturers, and the farmers of the country were
said to be up in arms. Ultimately, the patent extension
was denied; so McCormick lost, just as he was to lose
almost all of the many lawsuits in which he engaged. He

28 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

emerged without protection from the patent laws, but
the debate had established clearly the fact of his priority
as the original inventor and it had put the stamp of
governmental approbation on the economic value of his
reaper.

History has since proved that the patent-extension
battle was futile. McCormick pushed on to success with
out the protection he thought was essential ; the Brock-
port manufacturers had gained the right to make reapers,
but they were not able enough to exercise it widely. He
knew how to organize an invention Into a business and
they did not. He possessed the creative genius to find
ways of making the reaper available for all farmers.

To remove to Chicago in those clays necessitated the
stern courage of the frontier fighter. The raw little city
in the swamps by Lake Michigan had in 1847 a popula
tion of only seventeen thousand. Land values had col
lapsed after an early boom, and a welter of mud and dis
ease made the town appear ridiculous to its neighbors.
There were few paved streets, the houses were frame
shacks, there were nothing but broken plankroads
through the swamps to the surrounding land, and the
harbor was obstructed by sandbars. But Chicago was
the center of a great area of rich land, a canal to the west
was about to be opened, and immigrants were flocking in.
It had little to offer in the way of material comfort, but
it was a city of opportunity.

Among the several firms which McCormick had
licensed to build reapers was Gray and Warner, of Chi
cago, manufacturers of cradles. For a time Gray became
his partner and together they built five hundred ma*
chines for the harvest of 1848, Then Gray quarreled
with McCormick over the terms of the partnership and
sold out to William B. Ogden, that great pioneer of early

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INVENTION 29

Chicago, and W. E. Jones. The firm name was McCor-
mick, Ogden & Company. Ogden was rich for those days,
and his confidence in the future of Chicago and the West
was unbounded. But he also possessed a strong tempera
ment, too strong to harmonize with the fiery zeal of
McCormick s nature. Also, the one was absorbed in his
reaper, while the other had wide interests in every activ
ity that touched Chicago. By 1849, they agreed amicably
to disagree, and McCormick bought the Ogden and
Jones half of the business for $65,000, Fifteen hundred
machines had been sold that year and he had made
enough money to pay so large a price: already, at forty
years of age, the Virginia farmer boy had become a cap
tain of young industry.

Some have said that Cyrus Hall McCormick was a
lucky speculator who rode to success on the wave of
energy that developed the West. This was the point
of view of jealous English competitors. Americans have
accorded him the honor of making the development of
the West possible.

So long as the reaping hook and the cradle were the
instruments of agricultural production, the yield of the
fields was limited to the amount of labor available. Be
fore the reaper, a scytheman could with infinite toil
harvest barely two or three acres of grain each day. In
1845, Ohio and Pennsylvania were the leading wheat
States* The West was still remote and isolated. Illinois
was raising five million bushels of wheat each year, but
its own consumption, plus its exportable surplus, was
far less than that. Because of lack of labor, much of the
crop could not be harvested and was given over to cattle
and hogs turned in to feed on golden wheat.

After 1849, the rumor of the discovery of gold in Cali
fornia made matters worse. Thousands left the East to

3 o THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

make the long journey overland in search of easy riches.
Commodity prices rose in reaction to the new supply of
bullion and such laborers as remained drew double wages.
The farmers of the Middle West, cut off as yet from easy
rail transportation, were helpless. The reaper appeared
at the eleventh hour and allowed them not only to pro
duce wheat for a rapidly expanding population, but, by
substituting machinery for expensive or non-existent
labor, to reduce the cost of their production and live
through.

| McCormick was quick to see what the discovery of
California gold meant for him. Where he might easily
himself have followed the prairie road into the setting
sun, he preferred to pin his faith to another golden future,
the future of wheat. He preferred to see himself a partner
of those men who would not be lured away and of those
sons of theirs who, in future generations when there was
no more gold in California, would be harvesting the
world s bread all through the prairies of the West. He
spread advertisements abroad predicting a shortage of
farm labor and telling how his reaper would relieve that
problem. While his brothers attended to the little brick
factory by the Chicago River, he rode endlessly over the
plains, spying out the homes of future farmers and
preaching the gospel of the reaper. He knew no rest, no
ease. He was experiencing the cost of service to an ideal.
But, after all, when have Scotch- IrLshmen ever counted
the cost? They were driven to Ulster for their faith.
They were driven thence to America, and took with them
the hard-working zeal which was the foundation-stone
of their prosperity. In America they sought the fron
tier and all its trials. They conquered the wilderness by
their ability. Doubtless they did not appreciate the full
destiny of their pioneering, but whatever of it they saw,

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INVENTION 31

they did. Cyrus Hall McCormick drew from his blood
his courage, his stubborn tenacity, and his native ability.
He added thereto an unbounded force of will that leaped
at obstacles whenever they appeared, and the clear vision
of imagination that saw beyond each barrier a prize.

He was a product of sterling inheritance and the dy
namic compulsion of new times. The eighteenth century
had vanished, individualism was beginning to be bruited
abroad, submerged peoples and personalities were stir
ring. The millions who had been toiling were somehow
feeling the influence of new democracy. Democracy was
born in the American War for Independence and grew up
in Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century. It
flourished robustly in the United States because the
country was free and new. Even to-day Americans are
young enough to tolerate experiments.

People have lived through stirring times during the
last hundred years. Wars have continued because we
have not quite been able to free ourselves from outworn
methods and bygone rules of conduct. But we have ad
vanced. We have used such advantage as we might gain
from five thousand years of history ; and we are conscious
of a wider horizon and an unfettered thought. Many men
are now able to try to develop new ideas where formerly
only a few had the vision to do so. Many men have
claimed the right to become individuals instead of a
pathetic few. We of the younger generation speak of
modernism and try to explain it and defend it. What we
really mean is that the nineteenth century taught the
twentieth to think for itself.

The whole sphere of political science has been restudied
in the light of experimental democracy. In the nine
teenth century the entire field of economics was plowed
almost for the first time. Intellectual and social worth

32 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

developed amazingly in reaction to the dimly seen hope
of relief from toil Soon men would no longer have to
break their hearts in the fields and in tiny shops : the
dawn would break as soon as machinery could be devised
to lighten labor. New thoughts were beginning to stir in
the minds of those few teachers who could show the many
how to use their minds instead of their muscles. The
stage of free events was set for Cyrus Hall McCormick
and the great men of his time. They were to make the
twentieth century possible by their vigorous leadership,
their organizing ability, their grand succession of new
practices and new thought, and their radiating glamour
of success. They shattered every old manner of life.
They made a new world wide and fine enough for the
unleashed power of modern times.

CHAPTER III
THE INVENTION OF A BUSINESS

CYRUS HALL McCoRMiCK invented the reaper and thus,
out of an undying service to humanity, achieved fame
enough for any man. The reaper is his chief claim to
recognition in the eyes of posterity. But until recent
years it was not sufficiently recognized that, even at its
inception, the invention bore within its loins the seeds,
not only of modern agriculture, but of modern industry
as well.

Freedom from almost universal slavery to the soil had
to be achieved before man could liberate himself from
the narrow limitations which hand labor set upon his
other occupations. McCormick made relief possible.
He must also be acclaimed as one of the inventors of
modern business and of the benefits it has brought to the
factory worker and to the consuming public. He was a
pioneer of mass production and of waste-saving methods
of manufacture. He conceived of utterly unheard-of
means of mass distribution such as advertising, public
demonstration, and warranty of product. His com
petitors thought him visionary. When he put into prac
tice certain schemes, since fundamental to the sale of
agricultural implements, such as credit to his customers,
his friends predicted his certain downfall. But he forged
ahead, and his business, founded on the same determined
vision that produced the reaper, was to live after him.

How grandly McCormick wrought during the latter
half of his life to accomplish this will become apparent
when one remembers that, just as he began to be effective
as a manufacturer, he was deprived of patent protection.

34 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

Instead of facing the world with a secure monopoly at
his back, he saw a horde of competitors rising up on every
side to meet him with copies of his own device. A
McCormick reaper, he had a right to fear, would per
form just as satisfactorily under any other name. Sey
mour and Morgan, his former licensees, had led the battle
against the extension of his 1834 patent. They had man
ufactured many of the reapers that had been built; and
now that the field was open to the public, they were hard
at work producing duplicates of McCormick s machine.
Hussey, also deprived of his own patent protection, was
still in the field and had not yet yielded to McCormick.
William F. Ketchum, who was later to lead the early
mower world, was obtaining patents and building ma
chines. The Fountain brothers and H. F. Mann were
placing on the market McCormick reapers to which their
own devices had been added. Altogether there were by
the end of 1850 at least thirty reaper firms which had
taken the basic principles of McCormick s invention as a
starting-point and were seeking to add something new.
Each year new manufacturers were springing up who
were building copies or adaptations of the Virginia
reaper- The prospect was not pleasant for a man who
knew that his was the original invention and bitterly
resented the fact that an unkind government had denied
him further protection just when his patent rights were
beginning to be valuable.

In connection with his application for a patent exten
sion, McCormick testified in 1848 that all told he had
built no more than 778 reapers, including 500 made with
Gray in Chicago in 1848. Fifteen hundred were built in
1849 during the Ogden partnership. Small as such quan
tities may seem, they gave him a long lead over his com
petitors which he was never to relinquish. He bequeathed

THE INVENTION OF A BUSINESS 35

to his successors a start that kept them in the supreme
position he had won and yet he did this without patent
protection.

There remains an illuminating letter written to him in
1859 by his beloved brother William on the event of the
refusal of the patent commissioners to extend his second
patent. William understood his elder brother better than
any other man and, out of his rare prescience, was able to
value correctly the real basis of his success. He wrote,
Your money has been made not out of your patents but
by making and selling the machines/ Cyrus business
continued to grow in the face of free and widespread com
petition, not because of his genius as an inventor, which
could now be drawn upon by all and sundry desiring to
copy him, but because of his skill, his boldness, and his
business acumen. Alone among the inventors of his
period, he was able to create a business.

Cyrus Hall McCormick was to become the leading
industrialist of his generation. In a day before the birth
of anything resembling a factory system, his prophetic
vision recognized the need for a factory of his own. It is
related that he raged at the damage both to his own
reputation and to farmers 7 crops caused by the inefficient
operation of a poorly built reaper thrown together regard
less of quality by one of his licensed manufacturers. Ever
conscious of the harvest needs of his farmer customers,
he knew his reaper could not succeed unless the same
ideals of service which he had adopted as his creed were
built into it. Therefore, after he was free from the limi
tations imposed on his aggressive temperament by the
partnerships of 1848 and 1849, he preferred to forge
ahead by himself. As soon as existing licensing agree
ments expired, he saw to it that every McCormick
machine was built in his own factory. There he could

36 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

dominate and so be assured that his experience-bred
demands for high quality would be met.

If the 1831 reaper was but a crude affair compared
with his later models, the first Chicago shop was no more
than a pale foreshadowing of the factories he was later
to organize. But as the original reaper won the plaudits
of the observers who watched it, so the factory of 1848
was remarkable in the eyes of those who saw in it the
beginning of Chicago s industry. A reporter for a Chicago
paper wrote of the little shop :

It is situated on the north side of the river near the piers [it
stood some three hundred feet east of the north cud of the
present Michigan Avenue Bridge] and is a well-fmivshed brick
building, 100 feet by 30 or over and three stories high. Attached
to the main building is a building containing a steam engine,
lathes for turning iron, and also a building containing six
forges. There are 33 hands employed in the factory, ten of
whom are blacksmiths. . . . The engine drives some fourteen or
fifteen machines; viz. a planing machine, two circular saws,
a tenent saw, a lathe for turning handles for rakes, pitch
forks, etc.; also two lathes for turning iron, a gage s patent die,
two morticing machines and two grindstones. Machines are
being set up for various other uses in several branches of car
penter s work We understand the proprietors design en
larging [the smithy] as it is at present too contracted for the
wants of the factory.

A wood reaper hewn out by machines for various
other uses in several branches of carpenter s work 7 has
become a steel machine speeding along behind a tractor :
the thirty-three hands have become six thousand work
men : the little steam engine that was the pride of young
Chicago is now a humming electric generator; the fifteen
machine tools have become eleven thousand, Yes,
McCormick Works has grown !

The growth began immediately. By the end of 1849

THE INVENTION OF A BUSINESS 37

the main building had been extended to a length of one
hundred and ninety feet. There were three planing
machines, six saws, nine lathes, three boring machines,
and sixteen forges. A hundred and twenty men were at
work. There were riverside docks for unloading materials
from lake schooners and for shipping finished reapers. In
1851 , a fire destroyed a large part of the old main building
and a new four-story wing was erected. Machinery * of
the latest design was installed. After the reconstruction,
a reporter of the Chicago Daily Journal visited the factory
and wrote an article on The Magic of Machinery/ which
I quote from Professor Hutchinson s account of those
early days :

An angry whirr, a dronish hum, a prolonged whistle, a shrill
buzz and a panting breath such is the music of the place.
You enter little wheels of steel attached to horizontal, up
right and oblique shafts, are on every hand. They seem motion
less. Rude pieces of wood without form or comeliness are
hourly approaching them upon little railways, as if drawn
thither by some mysterious attraction. They touch them, and
presto, grooved, scalloped, rounded, on they go, with a little
help from an attendant, who seems to have an easy time of
it, and transferred to another railway, when down comes a
guillotine-like contrivance, they are morticed, bored, and
whirled away, where the tireless planes without hands, like a
boatswain, whistle the rough plank into polish, and it is turned
out smoothed, shaped, and fitted for its place in the Reaper or
the Harvester. The saw and the cylinder are the genii of the
establishment. They work its wonders and accomplish its
drudgery. But there is a greater than they. Below, glistening
like a knight in armor, the engine of forty-horse power works as
silently as the little wheel 7 of the matron; but shafts plunge,
cylinders revolve, bellows heave, iron is twisted into screws
like wax, and saws dash off at the rate of forty rounds a second,
at one movement of its mighty muscles. But there is a greater
still than this. There by the furnace fire, begrimed with coal
and dust, decorated with an apron of leather, instead of a

38 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

ribbon of satin, stands the one who controls nay, who can
create the whole.

The factory beside the Chicago River kept on growing.
In 1856, it had a producing capacity of forty reapers each
day and actually made four thousand that year. In
1859, when it had passed its tenth birthday, there was
a total floor area of 110,000 square feet. Leander J.
McCormick, a younger brother of Cyrus, was the plant
superintendent. There were four foremen of the wood,
metal, foundry, and repair departments. Three hundred
men worked a ten-hour day for a wage of from one
dollar to two dollars per day. The manufacturing pro
gram for the season consumed 371,000 feet of ^ lumber,
48,776 pounds of cast steel, 62,500 feet of iron chain,
661 tons of wrought iron, 942 tons of pig iron, 170,000
pounds of malleable iron finger guards, 90,000 pounds of
tin, copper, and sheet zinc, and 437 tons of coal.

An industry of such scope would seem pathetically
small to-day; but in its infant stature there lay the
promise of gigantic proportions in the future. Also,
compared with what had gone before, this factory was
impressive*

Previous to this and other American factories, the
world s sole effort at anything resembling industrializa
tion lay with British spinners. In the eighteenth cen
tury, a home industry equipped with fireside looms had
been suddenly, rudely, metamorphosed into a factory
system by the invention of spinning-mill machinery.
The picturesque inefficiency of high-cost hand looms gave
place to squalid, crowded, degrading shops. Machine
looms were necessary to progress, but progress was
slowed by the turmoil caused by the oppression meted
out by inexperienced capitalists to caste-ridden villagers
viciously turned into slaves of the machine. Working-

THE INVENTION OF A BUSINESS 39

men smashed the new labor-saving machinery. They
thought their jobs were being destroyed. No one was
wise enough as yet to realize that machinery would not
only reduce cost, but actually mean more work and a
greater purchasing power through widespread and higher
wages. But no such economic cycle was ever heard of
until within the years of American industrial progress.
Even in this country no clear understanding of it has
existed until the most recent quarter-century. It has
been left for modern America to garner the economic
fruits of true industrialism.

Industry began when some early man became so
skilled at making stone axes or flint arrowheads that he
undertook to produce them for his neighbors as well as for
himself. As soon as his trade grew enough to warrant a
helper, organization came into being. But there the
growth of industry stopped. In all their experience,
neither the luxurious Egyptians nor the wise Greeks nor
the rich Romans nor the monks of the Middle Ages nor
the princes of the Renaissance created out of their man
ner of living enough of a demand to bring more of a fac
tory system into existence than the artisan and his own
few apprentices.

As material production increased in response to an
increasing population s demand for necessities and lux
uries, certain men naturally acquired skill in making
articles for sale. Their products were sought after for
their intrinsic worth. They made the things that were
asked for, and when a new demand came into being, they
invented new articles. It must, for example, have created
a stir in early military circles when some smith produced
the earliest protective armor; and the carpenter who
first devised a chair must have been famous. The theory
of organization that accompanied primitive production

40 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

did not advance until the Middle Ages, when trade guilds
were devised to supplant the slavery of pagan days. But
even when the discovery of new portions of the globe
gave so great an impetus to human vision, business
methods did not change greatly. The stock company was
invented in the sixteenth century, thus permitting the
ownership of commerce and industry to be diversified;
yet the actual conduct of business went on pretty much
as before so far as methods and management were con
cerned. Production still remained in the hands of a few
skilled men who divided their time between work with
their own hands and such instruction as they provided
for student apprentices. These last were learning to
acquire the art of their trade and would become the
artisans of the future.

It was the individualism fostered by the guild system
that caused ancient production to be so very worth while
in its results. Benvenuto Cellini may be an outstanding
example of the ability of labor to produce beauty, but
there were countless other men in whom stirred the spirit
of creativeness. A master workman acquired a reputa
tion for excellence; apprentices were drawn to him by his
fame in his profession; they grew up in the tradition of
his skill; and, as invariably happens, the quality of one
effort was improved when intelligence carried it on into
the next. An apprentice toiling to chisel out a silver
gob!et or weave velvet or carve a piece of fine furniture
could see his work develop from day to day. It was
necessary for him to understand what results he was
trying to accomplish and to believe in his work. He could
scan in his own hands the whole progression of manu
facture and therein could control his own career. He
developed as his work advanced. It is not necessary to
assume that every product of such a system of business

THE INVENTION OF A BUSINESS 41

was beautiful or that every worker was endowed with
outstanding ability. Men were probably pretty much of
an average then as now some good, some medium,
some bad. The truth was that the old guild system
allowed such brains as men possessed to develop in the
most individual manner. The surprising thing is that
this individualism did not produce more inventions.

That it failed to do so was due to the conditions of life
rather than to the state of business organization. Even a
method that allowed workmen to become artists could
not cause them to develop beyond surrounding circum
stances. The horizon of fifteenth-century Europe hardly
overpassed the two ends of the Mediterranean. As soon
as the Western Hemisphere was discovered and a road
was found to the East Indies, men s imaginations flared.
Yet even when young America was brought into being,
the older commercial methods remained in force. One
thing alone brought about a change; the inventions which
were the birth of modernism in industry.

I do not assert that factories in 1850 were more than
the seed from which modern American business has
grown. But I see in them all, and in Cyrus Hall McCor-
mick s reaper factory in particular, the root of what we
do to-day. Later I shall have more to say of present-day
production. For the present, let it be assumed that the
American manufacturing system depends, among other
things, upon standardization and mass production. Mass
production includes the ordered progress of a part in
process of manufacture from the raw material stage
through one machining operation after another and so
into the various steps of assembly. These two elements
of mass production were devised in Cyrus Hall McCor-
mick s factory just as surely as he invented and produced
the first reaper.

42 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

Consider what the Chicago Journal reporter observed in
1851. He wrote of materials approaching their destination
on little railways/ apparently on a definite schedule; of
transfer mechanism to handle material from one conveyor
system to another ; and of the ordered succession of wood
working operations. Each of these statements is an indi
cation of rudimentary mass production. Furthermore,
this journalist of long ago stated that the attendant
seemed to be having an easy time of it. This effortless
type of man-labor is the very essence of mass production,
where tireless mechanism substitutes for the heavy work
that used to make a man strain at his toil. Mass pro
duction depends much on mind and little on muscle, and
it would seem that this fact had been discovered by the
inventor of the reaper. In subsequent years many special
machine tools were devised in his enlarged Chicago
factories, all designed to reduce production cost to a
minimum. Doubtless his employees and not he himself
conceived them. He inspired them.

As for standardization of parts, a Chicago Tribune
reporter wrote in 1859, A farmer of Illinois or Missouri
who, in an earlier year bought a machine, has only to
mention the part he wishes duplicated, with the year of
his purchase, and from the "Repair Room" the pattern
maker or the foundryrnan takes his pattern and fills the
order promptly/ This quotation teaches an interesting
lesson on the function of rendering service which now,
seventy years later, is so proudly stressed in the adver
tising of every company that sells a mechanical product
to the public. It also suggests that in the early McCor-
mick Reaper Works there was an acute understanding of
the interchangeability of parts, which is popularly sup
posed to have originated among the makers of auto
mobiles.

THE INVENTION OF A BUSINESS 43

There seems to be one way only of accounting- for
McCormick s mastery over manufacturing problems.
His commercial mentality, originally mechanical, had
to clothe itself with a salesman s enthusiasms. But before
selling, he had to conquer an entirely undeveloped field
of manufacturing endeavor and pioneer a way toward
modern production methods. He did so because of his
unbending insistence upon that dearest ally of a salesman
quality. He preached quality to his factory men until
it was engraved on their hearts. In modern parlance, he
sold them quality so well that they understood the
necessity for it and therefore believed in it. Each year
the McCormick reaper became heavier, stronger, better:
each year it gained more favor with the farmers. My
father has told me how he used to hear his father say, I
don t want to make my entire profit from a single sale
I want to make the machines so good that the farmer and
his sons will come back again and again to buy more
McCormick machines. A common statement among
salesmen was, This reaper is so strong that you can hitch
your team to it, go anywhere the Lord permits, and the
machine will do its work.

The most spectacular part of modern industry is its
manufacturing efficiency. The science that underlies
mass production has grown from such small beginnings
as McCormick s factory on the Chicago River, with its
five stories and its three hundred men, until now it is the
familiar genius of those who would produce their thou
sands of articles per day. But manufacturing skill is
not the whole of industry. Even in his earliest days in
Virginia, Cyrus Hall McCormick was exploring other
foundations of modern business.

The first advertisement of the reaper appeared in 1833
in the Lexington Union. From time to time until 1835,

44 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

McCorrnick published notices of it and also of his hillside
plow. These early documents are interesting merely as
indicating that the system of advertising and propaganda
he devised after his move to Chicago had a contemporary
root in the mental energy and imaginative vision that
produced the reaper. Once he had invented his machine,
he was foreordained to forge ahead to its manufacture.
The business which he was to develop was to be a well-
rounded whole, to include both the reaper and the genesis
of the organization methods which to-day T s generation
uses.

After 1840, McCormick and his machine were naturally
of much concern to the press of Virginia. By 1845, he was
publishing long advertisements in the farm papers of
Chicago, Detroit, Columbus, and northern New York.
As his interest in the West increased and he began to
withdraw his activities from the Atlantic seaboard, the
Virginia newspapers turned their attention to Hussey,
But, though he lost their praise, McCormick knew his
destiny was bound up with the prairies.

The reaper advertisements of the middle century now
seem nai ve in the extreme, but that is only because we
of this generation are accustomed to see our publicity
couched in the modern style. In May, 1849, for example,
McCormick, Ogden & Company published a handbill
with a picture of a team of sleek horses at the top trotting
along with a reaper in tow, A blithe boy cracks a whip, a
waistcoatcd gentleworker in a top hat leans forward
gracefully in his seat and rakes the severed grain from the
platform. The text speaks of abundant crops to conic,
the labor shortage due to emigration to California, and
the need of placing an early order before the supply
should be exhausted. The reaper is now believed to be
complete and unexceptionable in construction and cer-

VIRGINIA

PATH

REAPER,

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A McCORMICK ADVERTISEMENT OF 1849

THE INVENTION OF A BUSINESS 45

tain to give still greater satisfaction to all in their opera
tion than ever before/ A list of reaper agents is added.
The lower half of the circular is filled with an elabo
rately worded round-robin testimonial of satisfactory
mechanical and money-saving performance signed by
farmers throughout Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and
Iowa.

If any one questions why I see in such an advertise
ment, spread abroad in a world that knew so little of
organized publicity, the genesis of modern advertising,
let him consider a moment: The reaper and its trotting
team are a small automobile made to seem large by a
draftsman s art; the smiling boy and the raker with
his top hat are the modishly dressed family group out
for a self-satisfied motor airing; the prediction of farm
prosperity is the same as that urge to buy which makes us
want refrigerators and radios and encyclopaedias; the
mechanical perfection of the reaper is similar to the last
word of style or design that compels us to buy Blank s
product, whatever it may be. The farmers testimonials
are the 1849 model of a society leader s purchased assur
ance that her complexion could not survive without such
and such soap. And as for simplicity why, the Ma
chines will all be so numbered and marked with paint,
showing the connection of the different parts one with
another that they can readily be put together by the
farmer.

McCormick added one element to his advertising cam
paign which is indicative of the fine assurance with which
he regarded his own work. As early as 1842, when for the
first time he began to be really satisfied with his inven
tion, he gave his customers an absolute guaranty of satis
factory performance or the return of their money. Obvi
ously the satisfaction must be measured in terms of that

46 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

day, not of this. The performance of the early reaper was
in harmony, not with the twentieth-century usage, but
with the untrained wants of the farmers of former days.
Farmers now are more experienced and want more. But
the reapers of that day suited that day s farmers, and
they suited the pride of Cyrus Hall McCormick. In 1852,
he published this grand challenge to the world : I warrant
them superior to Hussey s and to all others. I have a
reputation to maintain. Let a farmer take both and keep
the one which he likes best/ What has the twentieth
century added to such confidence in the high quality of
the service your product is ready to perform?

Field tests of competitive reapers were continually
organized. It will be remembered how McCorrnick
ordered his brothers to meet Hussey in Maryland and
put him down. 1 The trials increased in number as more
competitors came into the field; but, by the same token,
the reliability of their results decreased. A poor patch of
grain would defeat a worthy entrant, some one would
appear with a specially built machine, a local gladiator
would win favor with the local judges. There was a six-
day test at Geneva, New York, in 1852, when BurraU s
reaper and Manny s mower won. Densmore s reaper and
Ketchum s mower carried off the honors at Springfield,
Ohio. There followed a war of letters led by McCormick.
He and his rivals occupied columns of newspaper space.
He proved by statistics that he should have won and
issued ringing challenges for next year s harvest. It is
perhaps significant that he went on selling as many ma
chines as all of his competitors together.

There was nothing of the subtlety of modern advertis
ing in these documents proclaiming the relative merits of
the early machines ; and one can hardly call the style of
the long letters in the press restrained. Competitors hit

THE INVENTION OF A BUSINESS 47

straight from the shoulder, they damned each other with
out mercy, they called Heaven to witness their own per
fection. They spoke the florid language of the day the
same language which, in the Nation s young diplomatic
correspondence, caused so many sneers among the chan
celleries of polished Europe and produced such unequi
vocal results. America was growing up. America was
inventing things of which Europe had never dreamed.
Americans liked an amusing controversy. The reaper
polemics appealed to their native humor. They clamored
for more debate and the publicity paid. McCormick
led all the others in pungent argument. Advertising, like
the reaper, was developing under the touch of his creative
hands.

Advertising pronunciamentos and lengthy disputes in
the columns of the papers were meat and drink to the
inventor-turned-business-man. He loved to debate and
he never wearied of extolling the merits of his reaper.
Writing of this kind he could do himself; but, as soon as
the production of the Chicago factory became impressive,
he could no longer travel through the country as had been
his wont, pockets full of order blanks and handbills, and
himself take orders. The volume of his business was now
enough to require executive attention. McCormick and
his brothers had time to do no more than take an occa
sional trip through the wheat lands, excursions which
served as a vacation to country-bred men tied by force
of circumstances to an office. They perforce appointed
deputies to do the actual selling.

The first official traveling representative was a cousin,
J. B. McCormick, who after 1845 roved up and down the
lower Ohio valley and into Tennessee and Missouri. In
1848, the first regular traveling agents were appointed
as territorial supervisors. H. G. Hubbard, A. G. Hager,

48 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

and J. L. Wilson were the earliest forerunners of the great
army of traveling implement salesmen who now encircle
the globe. The main function of these pioneers was to
represent the home office in appointing and supervising
the local agents who were the direct approach to the
farming public.

The duties of the local agents were not very different
from what they are to-day. Their contract provided that
they should maintain a sample machine, canvass the
wheat districts in the territory assigned to them, deliver
reapers and instruct purchasers in their operation, stock
spare parts, be prepared to do repair work and render
field service, make reports, collect money due on notes,
and distribute advertising. They often operated through
sub-agents, country blacksmiths or general storekeepers,
who may perhaps be considered the first farm implement
retailers. Rules of procedure were laid down for them, but
these they broke with impunity if by so doing they could
advance the MeCormick cause. They were supplied with
sales arguments for their own machine and against rivals,
but when they were face to face with the fact of competi
tion, they had to rely mainly on their own initiative and
energy. The report of one of them, which I quote from
Hutchinson s biography, gives such a delightful picture
of the sterling days of olcl that I repeat it at length :

I found in the neighborhood supplied from Cassville quite
early in the season one of Manny s agents with a fancyfully
painted machine cutting the old prairie grass to the no small
delight of the witnesses, making sweeping and bold declara
tions about what his machine could do and how it could beat
yours, etc., etc. Well, he had the start of me, I must head him
somehow. I began by breaking down on his fancy machine
pointed out every objection that I could see and all that I had
learned last year . . , gave the statements of those that had seen
the one work in my grass ... all of which I could prove. And

THE INVENTION OF A BUSINESS 49

then stated to all my opinion of what would be the result should
they purchase from Manny. You pay one half money and give
your note for the balance, are prosecuted for the last note and
the cheapest way to get out of the scrape is to pay the note,
keep the poor machine and in a short time purchase one from
McCormick . . . Now gentlemen I am an old settler, have shared
all the hardships of this new country with you, have taken it
Rough and Smooth . . . have often been imposed on in the way I
allmost know you would be by purchasing the machine offered
you to-day. I would say to all, try your machine before you
[pay] one half or any except the freight. I can offer you one on
such terms, warrant it against this machine or any other you
can produce, and if after a fair trial . . . any other proves superior
and you prefer it to mine, keep [it]. I will take mine back, say
not a word, refund the freight, all is right again. No Gentle
men this man dare not do this.

The Result you have seen. He sold not one. I sold 20.
About the same circumstances occurred in Lafayette County.

All Harvester dealers the world over know men like
this D. R. Burt, of Waterloo, Iowa. He was as much a
fighting pioneer as was his chief, he knew the toil of service
and the challenge of success, he saw clearly his single ob
jective in life and he gained it. The agents of seventy-five
years later are no less hardy, no less fine, no less devoted
to the higher destiny of the country Burt was helping to
make. But they do not knife competitors. The world is
more graceful now than then, that is all. Burt is gone
and the men like him, but similar trials remain. There
is a motor-car to ride instead of a horse, there are leagues
to journey instead of miles, there are many machines to
tend instead of a few but the farmer, a newer and
wiser farmer, is still asking to be served.

Each year the reaper was better, but there were, never
theless, many complaints for the agent to adjust. The
gearing on the 1853 reapers failed and had to be replaced
during the following winter, free of cost to the purchasers.

50 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

Farmers would insist on delaying their orders until late,
hail might come to ruin an assured crop, pests would
ravage a harvest and change triumph into disaster, ma
chinery was not understood, reapers needing repair were
left standing in the field through the winter and given no
attention until the last frantic moment before harvest.
A factory expert sent out from Chicago to help an agent
reported: I am sorry I enlisted, but there is no use, I
shall go through with the Job if I live the machines are
in the worst plight imaginable. I have found them out
doors and frozen down just where they used them last.

The most important innovation introduced into his
selling system by McCormick was his plan of credit and
easy terms. From the very beginning of his career, he
recognized that a farmer s ability to buy was different
from that of other men. By the very nature of his busi
ness, a farmer cannot keep on hand a large supply of
liquid capital. This may not have mattered much when
each agriculturist produced his own food and clothing;
but things changed as soon as there were manufactured
articles to be bought and paid for. A wheat farmer s in
come comes in once a year, after harvest, and he must
pay for the machine he uses out of the receipts he gathers
after the machine has done its work. McCormick himself
said that one could sell a reaper only by waiting until it
had paid for itself,

In the early fifties the price of a reaper was $125, The
farmer was asked to pay $35 cash plus the freight from
Chicago. The balance was due on December 1st, with
6 per cent interest from July 1st. However much the
local agents were instructed to adhere to these terms, it is
certain they never hesitated to depart from them. In
practice the cash received at the time of a sale varied from
ten per cent to twenty-five per cent, and the balance was

THE INVENTION OF A BUSINESS 51

collected whenever possible within the next year and a
half.

Of course such a credit system entailed some losses.
To-day, farm credit is generally considered the best in
the world. In the days when the West was being settled,
men were often cruelly tested in their battle with the soil
and many failed. Credit losses were therefore higher than
now, and varied from three to five per cent. The cost of
collections is given as seven and one-half per cent. In
1856, for example, only a third of the business done was
for cash and the collectible portion of the balance was
secured within fourteen months. Such extended credit
demanded a huge provision of capital and could have
been justified only by what would now be considered
colossal profits.

The subsequent history of credits to farmers has fol
lowed accepted economic law. As the risk decreased, the
necessity for such large profits diminished ; as the volume
rose, the profit per sale lessened. Farm credits have since
become more secure. That they were good even in Me-
Cormick s later days is indicated by a story of the weeks
immediately succeeding the Chicago Fire. He sat on a
bank directorate with the great merchant, Marshall
Field, The latter, whose business had been all but obliter
ated by the conflagration, therefore had an opportunity
to see how money was rolling into McCormick s account
from the country. Field sought and obtained a loan of
one hundred thousand dollars, which money became the
foundation of his reconstituted business.

There is a story current among the older men of the
International Harvester Company which illustrates
Cyrus Hall McCormick s attitude toward the pioneers of
farming in the West and their crying need for credit. In
the early days, when most of the country was unculti-

52 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

vated, farming was a precarious venture, and outpost
farmers, who had bought reapers on time, would too fre
quently lose their grain and have no income. McCormick
met such a situation at Webster City, Iowa, then a mere
dot on the broad prairies. When he heard of their crop
failure and their inability to meet their notes, he shook
hands with each one of the worried debtors, promised to
see them through, won their friendship to such an extent
that for years none but a McCormick machine could be
sold in the town and never lost a penny.

By 1856, there were McCormick agents all over the
wheat-growing sections of the United States. They were
putting into effect the sales portion of a new business
system. Cyrus Hall McCormick had invented a reaper
for a world that needed mechanized farming. When that
was done, he had provided as a background for his ma
chine a new kind of factory, where, though he doubtless
knew it not, he was developing the first steps toward
standardization and mass production. Then he invented
a system of distribution which included the first bold use
of public debate in the press to expound his new me
chanical doctrine, the first broad warranty of a manufac
tured product, the first aggressive system of selling, the
first conception of service, and the first broad application
of credit. He invented the reaper, and he also invented
the means to make it attainably useful to farmers.

It is possible that future historians will allot as im
portant a place to the second feat as to the invention of
the reaper. McCormick s was the first successful machine
of its kind. Too many inventions which might otherwise
be of use to the world fail because the element of com
mercial appreciation is not added to them, or because
the cost of production is too high, or because no ade
quate distribution system is matured. The inventor of

THE INVENTION OF A BUSINESS 53

the reaper provided the needed accessories to supply his
device to the world. He projected the entire distributing
plan himself and, to care for production, he developed
around him a circle of able men, whose work adds to
rather than detracts from his fame. He himself, a farmer
turned inventor and forced by circumstances to develop
new business methods, was the organizer who metamor
phosed his visions into a practical and integrated unit of
service to agriculture.

CHAPTER IV
THE EVOLUTION OF THE INDUSTRY

As ONE reviews the life record of Cyrus Hall McCormick,
one is constantly impressed with the fine results arising
from the interplay of his vigor and his imagination.
While he does not appear consciously to have set about to
guide destiny, some subtle force seems ever to have been
piloting him and insuring his progress, Once his eyes
were fixed upon an objective, however distant, nothing
short of complete attainment satisfied him. Thus, he dis
covered foreign trade, fought for and captured a full share
of it, and, in a day when the United States was an im
porting country, strove mightily beside those who turned
the balance of trade in our favor. Having invented first
the reaper and then a business, a part of the latter task
was his foresensing of the fact that much of our national
commercial destiny might lie overseas. Other men s eyes
were fixed on the West, whose worth he appreciated as
much as any one. His processes of thought were so rapid
that he was able to comprehend the tremendous nature of
that problem and still have room for Europe within the
range of his vision.

During the years when his every energy might be
thought to have been devoted to the new factory in
Chicago and to the development of the Western States,
he had time to note and understand the significance of the
fact that the exportation of wheat from the United States
to Europe was increasing. Perhaps the chief cause of this
was the growth of inland railway transportation ; but the
reaper also was playing an important part in transforming
America into a food-exporting country. In Great Britain,

THE EVOLUTION OF THE INDUSTRY 55

the cradle was less widely used than in America and the
starvation wages paid to farm labor had driven harvesters
to the cities to seek work or to California to find gold ; so
the stage was undoubtedly set for machinery. Indeed,
Englishmen had long been striving to solve the problem
of the reaper, but neither Ogle nor Bell nor any other had
approached success.

Ever since 1849, when he built a special machine de
signed for presentation to Prince Albert s Royal Agricul
tural Society, McCormick had been turning his eyes
toward the English market. The Crystal Palace Exhibi
tion of the Industries of All Nations in the summer of
1851 furnished the suitable occasion. He sent the special
reaper across the Atlantic in the spring and himself fol
lowed in August. Hussey had heard of his rival s plans
and sent a machine of his own. They met before two hun
dred spectators including the jury from the Exhibition
and Hussey s machine failed miserably because of the
operator s lack of skill. A second trial confirmed the re
sult of the first, and the Virginia reaper was awarded the
Council Medal, the highest prize of the Fair.

Before this test the reaper and, indeed, the entire
American exhibit had been made the butt of criticism
and newspaper sarcasm. The young United States had
developed little art of its own, so it could show nothing
except those useful products it had provided to make its
own daily life more tolerable. Cotton, tobacco, india-
rubber shoes, a new repeating pistol, and articles for
household use were shown. McCormick s reaper, perhaps
because of the prominence of the stand it occupied, drew
upon itself the special ire of the London Times. It is a
cross between an Astley Chariot, a wheelbarrow, and a
flying machine, said The Thunderer; and it went on to
sneer that America was proud of her agricultural imple-

5 6 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

merits which [English manufacturers] would reject as
worthless. But by the time the Exhibition was over the
American exhibits had won more prizes in proportion
than the British themselves. The McCormick reaper was
attracting more attention than the Kohinoor diamond
and the Times declared that it might repay Great Britain
for the entire cost of the Exhibition,

McCormick made arrangements with a British firm to
manufacture his reaper and went home. Hussey remained
behind and, under his own skilled handling, won two sub
sequent field trials from the Virginia machine. For some
time both reapers continued popular in England and both
were sold in considerable numbers with far less resistance
than they had met ten years previously in America. But
by 1855 the tide of popular favor turned to McCormick.

However much England progressed in mechanized
harvesting, France remained true to hand methods until
1855, when there was an International Exposition in
Paris. A great field trial for reapers was organized, the
McCormick machine won and was given the Grand
Medal of Honor. Horace Greeley, who had also witnessed
the American triumph at the Crystal Palace, wrote to
the New York Tribune that the reaper s victory was more
beneficent and creditable for the United States than if
fifty thousand of her troops had defeated one hundred
thousand choice European soldiers/

The reaper was spreading rapidly throughout Europe.
A McCormick machine was sold in Austria in 1849, and
the Austrian press looked forward to the clay when
American machinery would solve the labor problem in
Austria and counteract the drift of the peasants toward
rebellion. A few years later, the reaper was introduced
into Prussia and Poland. In 1858, the first McCormick
machine reached Russia. At every opportunity the

THE EVOLUTION OF THE INDUSTRY 57

reaper was exhibited at the great international fairs and
carried off many prizes to bring credit to itself and honor
to its inventor. During the inventor s lifetime it won ten
major and many hundred minor awards, far more than
any of its competitors. Cyrus Hall McCormick was him
self made a corresponding member of the Legion of Honor
and a member of the Institute of France for having done
more than any living man for the cause of agriculture.

One great advantage to the American manufacturers,
who were thus picturesquely and successfully struggling
to expand their trade into foreign lands, was the advertis
ing value they saw in the reports they were able to publish
at home of their foreign triumphs. Such reports opened
the eyes of American farmers to the honor accorded their
native machinery by old and instructed Europe. There
lay the seat of all wisdom, all experience. Our country
was brave and confident, but it lacked sure knowledge
based on precedents of its own ; so a reaper salesman was
helped when he could say that the selfsame product he
was selling west of the Mississippi was operating on the
royal farms of France and England. Even yet American
farmers were asking for proof before they bought or
perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they were
evincing an increasing interest in quality.

At the moment of its birth, the reaper was by no means
perfect. It contained in its design the seven vital prin
ciples without which grain cannot be harvested at all, but
it cut grain precariously. In its first years its commercial
value was hampered by its mechanical insufficiency.
Then came the initial conception of the properly ar
ranged and opposed cutter-bar serrations, the first of
McCormick s post-invention period improvements, which
were to make the original device entirely practicable.
The addition of a seat for the raker made the machine

58 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

easier to operate. After the move to Chicago, changes to
facilitate operation, increase durability, and expand its
usefulness were many. Even before the reaper was turned
into the binder, these improvements were fundamental.
They were betterments added to the seven original prin
ciples, and, since no one of them vitiated the 1831 ele
ments, they strengthened them.

After 1848, the home office was kept in touch with the
performance of the reapers in the field principally by the
reports of agents and the analyses of complaints sent in
by the company s own travelers. McCormick himself had
to spend long periods in Europe, where his business was
expanding hugely. His correspondence frequently ex
presses the despair he felt at being so far from the prairie
farms he loved. But he had left behind him, graven in
the minds of the men in charge of his business, a solemn
command to keep the reaper abreast of any demand for
betterment.

So, as the agents reported trouble due to poor design or
too frequent breakage of a part, the reaper was strength
ened or improved. Before 1855, the weight of the machine
had increased from eight hundred to twelve hundred
pounds. The main wheel was enlarged to effect better
riding qualities and a steadier drive for the mechanism.
The reel was again improved. The wood platform was
covered with sheet zinc to make it more durable and the
grain easier to rake off. A seat was provided on the
machine for the driver as well as for the raker. Malleable
iron guards were substituted for cast iron as soon as a
dependable source of supply could be found. Most im
portant of all, the modern form of knife with riveted-on
cutting sections was devised in 1851. These sections were
triangular pieces of steel with serrations cut in their
diagonal edges. Thus the former straight cutter bar, with

THE EVOLUTION OF THE INDUSTRY 59

opposed serrations incised into its forward edge, now
became nothing more than a carrying member, and the
actual attack on the grain was made by the sections.

All reaper inventors started out with the theory that a
reaper designed to harvest grain would also cut grass. In
the middle forties it began to appear that this hope would
not be realized. Certain reapers developed in grass dis
tricts were unsuccessful in grain; certain reapers, such
as McCormick s, whose main objective was grain, were
inferior as mowers. Men began to understand that the
two problems were different. Wheat or oats, when ready
for harvest, present a dry, brittle stalk which is easily
severed by a sharp knife. Green grass is tougher by far.
Furthermore, it is desirable to cut grass closer to the
ground than is necessary with wheat. The guards of a
mower cutter bar almost scrape the ground, and stones
which would be overpassed by a grain reaper will wedge
between the projecting fingers of mower guards. Grass
has more of a tendency to drag or clog in the space be
tween the cutting knife and the guards; hence the an
gularity of the cutting members must be different in a
mower.

For such reasons, the early attempts to perform both
functions with the same mechanism were doomed to
failure. Hence the effort McCormick and others made to
develop a combined type of reaper which could be turned
into a mower simply by removing one cutter bar and sub
stituting another. The first McCormick mower was a
reaper with the platform removed. When it was tried in
prairie grass near Chicago in 1849, it was even equipped
with the reel. It did not perform at all ; so next year a
mower attachment with a new knife was produced. Even
this got nowhere until, in 1851, the iron cutter bar with
the riveted-on sections was developed and special mower

60 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

guards were invented. However great its success in
grain, the McCormick reaper could not be called a good
mower, at least in its earlier years.

In the meantime other men were achieving distinction
in the mower field. Husscy s reaper, though never a great
commercial success, was a better grass machine than
McCormick s. In later years the old sailor won a suit for
patent infringement against his ancient rival and col
lected a large sum in damages. William F. Ketchum
became for a time the country s leading mower exponent.
He gave over the attempt to build a combined mower
and reaper; and it is probable that his concentration on
a single purpose was beneficial. Manny had the best
combination mower and reaper. McCormick s adaptation
of his reaper was inferior to several of his competitors
machines; but all were outdistanced in 1858 when Lewis
Miller invented the famous Buckeye mower, a two- wheel
machine with a hinged cutter bar. In that day of strife
between competitors and constant friction, it is interest
ing to note that in 1860 the Buckeye consolidated with
its two chief independent rivals and thus effected the
world s first agricultural implement combination. Mc
Cormick forged on alone, ahead of all others because he
had at his back the best business organization.

He was never of a cooperative frame of mind so far as
his competitors were concerned. The temper of the times
was entirely individualistic and he was one of the men
who set the fashion of thought for his day. Like many
another born leader, he found it impossible to subordi
nate the force of his will to any thought of compromise
or collective action. He was strong enough to carry on
alone, he was sure of his cause and of himself : why should
he not fight for his rights and himself defend them when
they were won? If he failed, no one would help him. The

THE EVOLUTION OF THE INDUSTRY 61

business captains of early American industry had to be
hardy warriors or they fell.

Thus, when McCormick returned from England in
1851, it was to meet Seymour and Morgan in the courts.
Ever since the Brockport partners had started to put on
the market a renamed copy of the Virginia Reaper, much
bad blood had naturally existed. Charges were hurled
through the press, threats were exchanged, and at last
McCormick sued. His rivals made some changes and gave
their machine a new name ; he won in the lower court, and
the issue dragged along until 1854 when he was awarded
$9*354 damages. The interesting point is not that Sey
mour and Morgan were thus driven from the reaper field
their competition was never very important after 1853
except in New York but that McCormick so boldly
assumed a front-line position against his competitors in
what has been called the battle of the reapers.

The long war with John H. Manny, the most brilliant
and successful of all his competitors, followed immedi
ately. McCormick filed suit against him for infringement
of the minor 1845 and 1847 patents. Practically all other
reaper manufacturers went in self-protection to the aid
of Manny. To make a very long story short, the verdict
sustained Manny, complimented McCormick, and was
immediately appealed to the Supreme Court. There also,
in 1858, Manny s innocence was reaffirmed; but he him
self had died in the meantime. At the height of his
career, his sale of machines exceeded all other competitors
and equaled McCormick s. He was another of those
brilliant American farmer boys who wrought so ably in
the embattled field of young business.

The vital interest to-day in this suit is in the array of
legal talent employed. McCormick s case was argued by
a corps of able patent attorneys. Manny s counsel in-

62 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

eluded, among others, Edwin M. Stan ton, who was soon
to become Secretary of War, and a comparatively un
known young man by the name of Abraham Lincoln.
What might otherwise have been little more than a
patent quarrel of local significance thus took on national
importance. It was Lincoln s first big case; he earned for
the first time a thousand-dollar fee; and the oratory of
Stanton fired his enthusiasm and inspired him toward the
Lincoln-Douglas debates which paved his way to the
Presidency.

McCormick s complete defeat left him apparently as
weak as he had seemed when Congress refused to extend
either his original or his subsequent patents. But in
reality he was so strongly entrenched that he needed no
patents. The technical advantages of his enemies could
not tear down the commercial ramparts he had built with
his executive ability and strengthened with the enormous
farmer goodwill he possessed. His brother William was
right when he told Cyrus that his success was due not to
patents but to his ability to make and sell machines.

Cyrus Hall McCormick s biographer has this to say
about his career during these eventful times: he never
appears to better advantage than during the years after
1848. He doubled and quadrupled his sales, greatly en-
larged his factory, dispensed with partners, fought his
rivals in Congress and in the courts, abroad and at home,
on countless harvest fields. He was admired and hated,
fawned upon and eulogized. But he never aroused
sympathy for himself and probably would have spurned
the man who offered it. He was a militant Scotch- Irish
pioneer, fired by the righteous zeal of his cause, forg
ing forward with unconquerable will, unswerving in his
purpose to serve the farmer.

The Civil War furnished the supreme test of the worth

THE EVOLUTION OF THE INDUSTRY 63

of the reaper. The Commissioner of Agriculture said in
1862 that it would have been impossible to harvest the
wheat crop if it had not been for the reapers in use in the
West, each of which released five men for service in the
army. The Scientific American published the statement
that without l horse-rakes, mowers and reaping machines,
one half of the crop would have been left standing on
the fields Secretary Stanton, now McCormick s friend
and ally, spoke glowing words of praise: The reaper is
to the North what slavery is to the South. By taking
the place of regiments of young men in the western har
vest fields, it releases them to do battle for the Union at
the front and at the same time keeps up the supply of
bread for the Nation and the Nation s armies. Thus,
without McCormick s invention, I fear the North could
not win and the Union would be dismembered.

We who can look back on that tragic epoch know that
the North won because of superior material resources:
more factories, more munitions, more railways to gather
together the offerings of a continent, more food. The
reaper made the food possible. Food held Europe neutral
when its sympathies were with the cotton-producing
South. The reaper preceded the railways into the
prairies and, in the hands of fighting frontiersmen, turned
buffalo ranges into stands of wheat made traffic to
justify the building of the railways. The reaper brought
the assurance of bread to the munition-making cities,
and, because Europe had to have wheat, brought money
back to the cities in return for the export of grain. The
reaper did its share in making the United States and
holding it secure.

The post-bellum reaper that followed the legions of dis
charged soldiers across the Missouri River or westward
along the line of the Union Pacific Railway was no longer

64 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

the reaper of the old days. Always McCormick was
seeking to better it, and year by year he added whatever
he thought would improve its operation. Obviously an
automatic raking device would help. Many men had for
long been trying to build a self-rake reaper and invariably
they tried to sell their ideas to him; but he was never
satisfied. One Jearum Atkins actually for a year or two
bade fair to run away with the reaper trade ; but his fan
tastic Iron Man machine vanished after the panic of
1857. McCormick stood his ground and refused to desert
his original type of reaper until something better ap
peared. His own self-rake machine was produced in 1862.
This was the regular reaper equipped with a counter
balanced rake arm pivoting at the axis of the reel, which
swept grain off the platform and to the side of the ma
chine* It eliminated a man s labor and it was popular
in its day. Yet it was but a step in the onward march
toward the binder and cannot be said to have been
epochal in any sense. It was a temporary convenience,
not a startling invention like the original reaper, not a
brilliant innovation like the harvester, nor a conclusive
answer to a demand like the binder.

Enough has been said of other men who made and sold
agricultural machinery before 1870 to indicate that,
however outstanding Cyrus Hall McCormick may have
been in the industry, he was by no means alone. He
was the unquestioned leader, but he was never without
competitors. Scores of companies were making reapers*
Talcott and Emerson were carrying on the Manny tradi
tion at Rockford. Benjamin II Warder was producing
reapers at Springfield in a partnership that was soon to
include young J\ J* Glessner. At Auburn, IX M, Osborne
made the mowers that bore his name* Each of the many
companies had a strong local following, and, though

McCORMICK s SELF-RAKE REAPER OF 1864
A mechanically operated arm swept the grain off the platform

A McCORMICK HARVESTER OF THE MARSH TYPE
Popular during the years 1875-1883

THE EVOLUTION OF THE INDUSTRY 65

McCormick had perhaps half of the entire trade in the
United States, his business was centered largely in the
non-manufacturing wheat districts west of Chicago.

This account of the evolution of the agricultural imple
ment industry would be incomplete if it included no refer
ence to that other man who, next after McCormick alone,
so wrought that the problems of the farmer were made
lighter. The reaper is the progenitor of all those agricul
tural implements which run upon the ground to deal with
grown crops. Before the dawn of history, man had in
vented the plow as a more efficient crooked stick to get
down under the surface and loosen the soil. But there
was nothing scientific, nothing modern in the ancient
method of hacking earth into clods and clods into dust.
A plow was still the crudest of implements until the old-
fashioned iron machine was introduced. Such a device,
however, will not clean itself in sticky land and farmers
would not continue to accept it. As the middle-western
part of the United States was settled in the third decade
of the nineteenth century, the cleaning, or scouring, diffi
culty became insuperable. An iron plow would break sod
well enough, but when the once-virgin soil had been
worked a few years, the loam would cake, stick to the
face of the plow, and clog the operation of the imple
ment.

At this time there lived in Grand Detour, an Illinois
hamlet, one John Deere, who had moved there from
Vermont in 1837. A blacksmith by trade, he had added
the repairing of iron plows to his other work. It was out
of the comparative failure of these rude tools that he hit
upon his great contribution to the science of farming, the
steel plow. He obtained a piece of broken bandsaw blade ;
he whittled a log into the shape he desired for the mold-
board and share of his plow; then he heated the piece of

66 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

steel, shaped and hardened it over the pattern; and lastly,
he added a wrought-iron landside. On its initial test,
this, the world s first commercial steel plow, proved a
complete success, and John Deere s name, though he
knew it not, was written on the pages of history.

There is a close parallel between Deere s plow of 1837
and McCormick s reaper of 1831. Both men seemed to
accomplish instant success, neither was satisfied with his
first work, both sought constantly to improve their de
vice, and each of them did far more than merely achieve
his immediate object. McCormick cut grain successfully
by mechanism for the first time and won undying fame
and he also developed the seven elements without which
no mechanical reaper can function. Deere gave the steel
plow to a needy world, a machine that would scour and
plow cleanly; but he should be equally famous because
he, first of all men, reduced to a science the shape of the
moldboard. He taught plow builders the world over that
good preparation of the soil is dependent not merely on
cutting into the ground, but on turning the sod over in
a predetermined manner dictated by the nature of the
soil.

John Deere s steel plow was not the very first; but, like
McCormick, he had organizing ability enough to build a
great business. He, too, had many worthy competitors,
two of whom deserve special mention. James Oliver
started making plows at South Bend in 1853. Seeking
also to provide a plow that would scour in all kinds of
soil, he turned to the use of chilled metal. Of the dis
couragements that attended his experimental efforts at
invention he said : Plow men who had spent years in ex
perimenting and had abandoned the project of a complete
chilled plow advised me not to undertake it. Those who
had aided me with money and influence forsook me, and

THE EVOLUTION OF THE INDUSTRY 67

I was classed with the fools who pursue the fallacy of
perpetual motion. Although feeling keenly the cuts of
former friends, I determined to succeed. Day and night
for years I thought of nothing else and made everything
bend to this one great object of my life.... The world
knows what splendid work for farmers has grown out of
Oliver s consecration. Is it too much to say that deter
mination coupled with vision are the necessary con
comitants of any invention?

William Parlin came from the East to Canton, Illinois,
in 1840. Like Deere, he made plows by conforming saw
blades to wooden moldboards. A few years later, William
Orendorff became his partner. While the former worked
in the little shop, the latter drove about central Illinois
with wagons loaded with plows. Aggressive salesmanship
was invariably rewarded in the land of agricultural
opportunity, and the business grew. Other implements
were added to the line until, in 1866, Orendorff picked up
the invention of a Missouri blacksmith, the first lister.
Corn joined wheat immediately as a crop suitable for
Western methods of cultivation.

Nothing, not even the business of these manufacturers
of plows, was able to challenge McCormick s lead in the
implement field. But the old reaper had lived too long
and its doom was spelled by the invention of the har
vester by two farmer boys by the name of Marsh. Their
first sales in 1863 followed trying years of experimenta
tion. Their theory was that harvesting was made slow
and difficult by the necessity of collecting and binding
grain on the ground where it fell from the reaper platform.
It is said that the brothers were nervous and highstrung
and could not tolerate any delay at the time of harvest.
So, by a feat of time-saving motion-study worthy of a
twentieth-century manufacturer, they elaborated a plan

68 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

of raising the grain by means of continuous canvas
aprons from the reaper platform over the top of the main
wheel, where it fell neatly on a table. Two men rode the
machine, standing before this table on a footboard. They
bound the grain as fast as it fell over to them and then
tossed the bundles to the ground. They could bind
speedily because they were able to stand erect at their
task; they did not have to step and stoop along, scraping
armsful of wheat together and halting to bind the sheaf.
Their work was brought to them the machine recog
nized the fact of their brains, not their puny muscles.

At the close of the Civil War, a new era of farm expan
sion began and the tremendous step ahead taken by the
Marsh brothers came in the nick of time. The machine
won immediate popularity. McCormick at first refused to
yield, but the march of progress was too strong. Many
of his competitors went to the wall or took out licenses
to make the Marsh type of harvester. The record does
not relate how McCormick s pride and his esteem for the
reaper took the shock of the reaper s defeat. We may
assume, however, that a man whose commercial judg
ment was so acute knew better than to cry over spilt
milk. The supremacy of the old machine was over -
the farmers wanted progress; so he, too, began to build
harvesters.

Every one realized how greatly the problem of harvest
ing had been simplified by the new machine. The self-
rake reaper had eliminated the raker, a clear gain in the
labor cost of a bushel of wheat. The Marsh harvester cut
the time of binding in two. But no one for a minute
believed that the end of mechanical development was in
sight. There was one S. D. Carpenter, a loquacious Wis
consin editor who was himself something of an inventor
and who for years had been, preaching the doctrine of

THE EVOLUTION OF THE INDUSTRY 69

mechanical binding. Influenced by his trenchant argu
ments, farm opinion held that somehow the harvester
must be equipped with mechanism to tie the bundles of
grain. Most inventions, if recognized at all, appear to
the men of their time to be the last word ; but the Marsh
harvester which was in every sense a great invention
was believed to be merely a brilliant advance step on
the highway of progress.

In 1872, Charles B. Withington sought out McCormick
and showed him a model of a wire binder. The reaper
inventor immediately saw that here was a chance to
regain whatever prestige he had lost in his own eyes.
He had lost none in the mind of the public, for the
McCormick manufacturing and selling system had been
powerful enough to carry on with the harvester in place
of the reaper; but he could not be satisfied until he had
made yet another contribution of his own to the science
of agricultural machinery. So he bought the Withington
device, built a few machines experimentally, and in 1877
was ready to produce the wire binder in quantities.

Farmers took up the wire binder as avidly as they had
the harvester. McCormick swept the field. Fifty thou
sand of the new machines were sold in the next few years.
In every place where wheat was grown, one could see the
arm of the Withington binder thrust its way over the
stream of wheat, seize a bundle of grain, lock the wire
about its middle, cut it loose, and toss it bound upon the
stubble. Some farmers objected. They said that the wire
broke off and pieces mingled with the straw to the detri
ment of their stock. But the economy of labor made
possible by the binder was sufficient to answer all objec
tions. Hand labor had now practically been eliminated.
A child old enough to hold the reins of a team could reap
and bind the crop. The wire binder, with two men to

70 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

pick up and shock the sheaves, could harvest twelve or
fourteen acres of grain a day.

McCormick s renewed supremacy was rudely chal
lenged in the harvest of 1880. One E. H. Gammon, a
former Methodist minister, had left the pulpit for more
lucrative service in the West where he sold reapers and
Marsh harvesters. He came ultimately to control the
Marsh factory at Piano, a suburb of Chicago, and took
as a silent partner a former fellow townsman from Maine,
William Deering. Deering was a new type of man to the
implement industry. He knew nothing about agriculture.
He had gained a fortune in the dry-goods business. Be
ginning life in his father s woolen mills, he had worked
his way upward through the hard school of commerce
and administration. He was the first man to enter the
implement industry who had not fought his way through
the bitter struggles of mechanical invention and soul-
testing competition. In 1873, Deering moved to Chicago.
He, too, Maine merchant though he was, felt the lure of
the West; and as his contribution to it he brought per
severance equal to that of any of the more experienced
gladiators already in the arena, and a nicely balanced
judgment of the characters of men that matched his
great commercial ability.

In 1879, Gammon fell ill and retired, and Deering, now
in sole charge of the firm s affairs, decided to move away
from Piano and build a new factory in Chicago s northern
suburbs. At the same time he bought the ideas of John
F. Appleby and prepared to build a twine binder. In the
first season, 1880, he made and sold three thousand of the
new machines. The wire binder s brief day of supremacy
was over,

Appleby, one of the great names in the history of
American invention, had hit upon the combination of

THE McCORMICK HARVESTER AND WIRE BINDER OF 1876
The first self-binder

^.li&ialla? S2

"ONE OF THE FIRST McCORMICK TWINE BINDERS
Built in 1 88 1

THE EVOLUTION OF THE INDUSTRY 71

successful units that had barred the access of all other
men to the secret of a successful twine binder. He win
nowed the wheat from the chaff of Locke s many inven
tions; from Carpenter he gathered the principle of the
elevation and then the downward delivery of the stream
of grain; from J. H. Gordon he got the idea of packer
cranks to wedge the grain in front of the tying needle;
from Behel he gleaned the idea for the knotter; and from
Gorham he took the principle of the automatic trip to
start the mechanism of the binder under the pressure
of the weight of grain. He himself assimilated all the
experience of previous twine-binder investigators, added
his own genius, and continued the cycle begun by the
invention of the reaper.

In one year Deering had built and occupied a new
factory, bought a hitherto untried patent and turned it
into an immensely successful machine, invaded a field
already crowded with experienced manufacturers, and
was rapidly running away with the remaining shreds of
the popular favor they had gained through so many
years! In truth, the age of romance was not yet over!
There was still room in business for courage and resource
fulness and vigor and nerve and ability. The unostenta
tious, shrewd newcomer possessed them all.

Fifty years after the first test at Steele s Tavern, Mc-
Cormick found his position again in jeopardy and his
leadership challenged by competition far more serious
than the Marsh harvester of a few years before. With
extraordinary rapidity he adapted himself to the new
circumstances, arranged for a license to manufacture the
Appleby type of twine binder, and entered the 1881
harvest ready to do battle as before, valiantly, mightily,
victoriously.

The evolution of the reaper was not complete until the

72 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

time when, decades later, the tractor would come into
being to furnish another type of motive power and de
mand other types of machinery. The reaper had lasted
for thirty years until it gave way to the self-rake reaper.
That yielded to the harvester, the parent of the binder.
The binder was to remain supreme for nearly forty years.
Its generation was to be a period of warfare and victory,
of commercial slaughter and increasing service, of bitter
hatred and the fineness of human vigor. McCormick s
career was to dominate the future, to guide the entire
half-century. His influence was to live on, even into the
age of power farming.

CHAPTER V
THE PIONEER

THE Chicago Fire of 1871 might have ruined the young
metropolis if it had not been for the courage and the
far-sightedness of a few leading men. When the holocaust
was over, the entire business district of the city and a
large part of the residential quarter had been wiped out.
The fifteen thousand buildings which had occupied the
district north of Harrison Street (where the present
Harvester Building stands), south of Lincoln Park, and
east of the two branches of the Chicago River, had been
destroyed. Three and a half square miles of city and
$188,000,000 worth of property were reduced to d6bris
and ashes. Ninety-four thousand people were homeless
and the working places of countless others had vanished.

Cyrus Hall McCormick s name figured prominently in
the rebuilding of Chicago, for he was one of the group
of leaders who had an aggressive confidence in the city s
future. Time and romance have endowed these men with
an aura of legend, attaching to their work for recon
struction a picturesqueness that is pleasant, but really
less typical of them than the actual facts. Suffice it to
say that in the minds of the captains of Chicago there
was never any question of yielding.

McCormick s wife and children were at that time in
Richfield Springs, New York. One morning they went
placidly to the telegraph office to announce their intended
departure for home. An excited clerk, hardly able to
speak, refused to take Mrs. McCormick s message on the
ground that there was no Chicago ! That was not so, of
course. Chicago s body had been destroyed, but its hard-

74 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

working, militant young spirit, as represented in the
brains and the enthusiasms of its better citizenry, was
very much alive. When some dispirited individuals began
to talk of moving to St. Louis or Milwaukee, the leaders
rose up and, by their force of will and courage, remade
the city.

W. D. Kerfoot built a shack in the middle of a former
downtown street and, announcing all gone but wife,
children, and energy/ went on selling real estate and
distributing enthusiasm. Mayor Roswell B. Mason built
a new city hall almost overnight. Joseph Medill, who
followed him in office, roused Chicago s enthusiasm for
sound construction. A rebuilt Board of Trade was opened
on the first anniversary of the fire. Field and Leiter lost
everything they possessed when their insurance com
panies failed, but they were smiling when their dry-goods
business opened temporarily in a stable. John V. Farwell
began to construct his new store while the stones of the
old buildings were still hot. Within two years Cyrus Hall
McCormick, Potter Palmer, R. T. Crane, and others
opened a huge exposition building on the lake front where
all the world might come and see how Chicago was
recovering from catastrophe.

McCormick met his wife five miles outside the ruined
city, gray from lack of sleep and with the arm of his coat
burned off. He drove with her to the wreck of the factory
to discuss the question of rebuilding. He was advancing
in years and was financially independent he might
easily have accepted the destruction of his property as a
decree of fate and elected to live the remaining years of
his life at peace. But ease was not one of the things this
fighting pioneer was looking for. His was the restless
energy which was always seeking some service to perform.
He felt that the farmers of the world needed his machines.

THE PIONEER 75

And there was his constantly reiterated belief, I know of
no better place for a man to die than in the harness/ In
truth, he did not know how to give over striving.

There is a tale to the effect that McCormick left the
decision to carry on or to retire to his wife; but to me
it seems that his character would have made surrender
impossible. He himself said, I at once determined to
proceed with the work of rebuilding/ So temporary
buildings were ordered while (as an octogenarian pen
sioner has told me) the workmen cheered.

Obviously the business had grown beyond the hemmed-
in possibilities of the little factory. Ten thousand reapers
had been sold that year and the early advent of the
Marsh harvester would soon widen the demand for
farm machinery. A few days before the fire, McCormick
had acquired a new factory site on the southwest side
of the city, far away from the crowded center of Chicago.
To insure plenty of room for growth, he bought a wide
expanse of prairie where his vacant acres might serve
first as testing fields and then for the expanding industry
he foresaw. If it did nothing else, the Chicago Fire
hastened the construction of the new McCormick Works.
The appliances which were the reaper s lineal descendants
were bursting the seams of the garments cut so many
years before to fit the frame of the reaper s youth. New
pioneering was needed.

The first of the new buildings was a long four-story
structure which housed the forge, the wood shop, and
the machine and assembling departments. Behind it was
the foundry. Seven hundred men worked in the factory
for nine months of the year. During the harvest season
it was customary to shut the plant down to permit the
entire attention of the company to be given to the field.
The first foundry has now given place to a towering man-

76 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

ufacturing structure; but the four-story building still
stands. High on its face is the proud legend of its past,
1 McCormick Reaper Manufactory. Established 1831. It
is now too small for the giant production program of
modern times, but, as a fitting tribute to McCormick s
insistence on service to the fanner, it now houses the
repairs department. And, as if in a memorial gesture of
tribute to the founder of the industry, another sign re
peats these words of a later president of the twentieth-
century company, Quality is the foundation of our
business/ The echo of the past is strong.

The new factory permitted the introduction of many
manufacturing processes which are of the greatest inter
est to a student of the development of the American
system of mass production. In certain cases their intro
duction took place after McCormick s death. Neverthe
less, it seems to me that he was responsible for them as
well as for the improvements which he directly super
vised. Men can expect no greater tribute than to have
their ideas carried forward by their successors into a gen
eration energized, not by their presence, but by the un
seen inspiration of their remembered greatness.

Huge warehouses were constructed where stocks of
machines built during the winter could be accumulated
against the invariably sudden shipping demand of the
pre-harvcst season. In 1875, a small locomotive was pur
chased to substitute more efficiently for horses, mules, or
oxen in shunting railway cars to and from the various
loading docks. The new gray iron foundry, which re
mained in service for twenty-five years until pulled down
to make room for a larger building, had a capacity of a
hundred tons of castings per day and was famous for its
molding machinery and other time- and labor-saving
equipment. Special boring machines were devised in

THE PIONEER 77

1886 to perform simultaneously several of the intricate
operations leading to the completion of a mower frame.
Painting tanks, where assembled units or even entire
machines could be dipped into a pool of paint, were
introduced in 1889 or earlier, and the slower method of
applying color by means of hand brushing was abandoned.

Such methods are one and all fundamental to modern
progressive manufacturing. The present system requires
man-power trained to accomplish one or a few operations
most skillfully rather than ancient craftsmanship which
knew how to perform many tasks accurately but not
economically. It also requires the introduction of
special, single-purpose equipment which will do several
tasks at once with a minimum expenditure of time. The
full development of special machinery was not reached
until forty or more years after Cyrus Hall McCormick s
death nor is it complete even to-day, for men are still
pondering and planning to improve the things they do.
Nevertheless, it is certain that our wider experience is
based upon the pioneering of the past.

It is also interesting in the extreme to discover how far
in advance of his time McCormick was in the matter of
welfare work. It is recognized in modern industry that an
executive should consider the interests of his employees;
but it is safe to say that fifty years ago few employers were
conscious of the fact that workmen have feelings. Most
managers regarded them then merely as another type of
machinery whose cooperation could be purchased for so
many cents the hour. Not so with McCormick. Possibly
because his own early years had been filled with hours of
severe toil, he appreciated better than other captains of
industry the social and economic importance of the inter
relation of satisfaction and labor. Just before his death
he inaugurated a policy of assistance to employees, the

78 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

most important element of which was the construction
of model cottages sold at cost to his men; and he gave
land for a church in the vicinity of his factory.

To portray Cyrus Hall McCormick merely as a suc
cessful inventor and business man is to miss many of the
most significant elements of his character. The great
men of all ages have been many-sided ; and he certainly
possessed that type of mind which is never satisfied by
the conquest of one world. As he became wealthy, it was
no more than fitting that his thoughts should turn toward
donations to his church. As a boy he had been brought
up in a highly religious atmosphere. Always serious-
minded and not given to the lighter activities of other
youths, it was natural for him to exhibit an ever-
deepening interest in church affairs. In 1846, when he
was urging his brother Leander to go to Cincinnati, one
of the advantages of that city in his eyes was its many
churches. Chicago, too, appealed to him in 1847 partly
because of the strength of the local Presbyterianism. So
when he had money to donate to causes, it was second
nature for him to seek to further the interests of the
Presbyterian Church.

At the 1859 General Assembly, he offered to endow the
professorships of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary
of the Northwest, provided the institution were removed
to Chicago. The account of his frequent gifts to religious
education, his energy and enthusiasm for the work of the
Seminary which he thus took under his wing, and his
overwhelming concern for its affairs, has no proper place
in these pages. Nevertheless, his methods were typical
of the spirit that went into the development of his
business. Just as he was ever eager to cross swords with
all and sundry who denied the supreme merit of his
reaper and to fill the columns of the newspapers here and

THE PIONEER 79

abroad with long articles on the invention, so he ap
proached theological debate. His letters were just as full
of technical discussion as were his panegyrics on the
subject of mechanized agriculture. Woe to the Seminary
professor, whether in Chicago or elsewhere, who sought
to convince him on some Scriptural or doctrinal point.
McCormick sprang to the defense of his own beliefs as
hardily as if the controversy concerned the originality of
his invention. The Bible, the teachings of Presbyterian
leaders, the sermons of those divines who belonged to his
school of thought, were one and all marshaled in defense
of his points. His correspondence bristles with argument,
his logic is pointed with the merciless barbs of supreme
self-confidence, his assurance is founded on deep-seated
consecration to the cause of Christianity.

In 1873, when religious issues were embittered by the
feud between the northern and the southern branches of
the Presbyterian Church, he bought a religious news
paper, The Interior, and tried through its editorial policy
to promote union between the Old and New schools of
embattled Presbyterianism. For years he poured money
into this publication. He never lost faith in the efficacy
of his message. He never saw himself, whether as an
inventor or as a private citizen, other than as a mis
sionary ordained to do some service for the world. His
pastor said of him, He thought of souls as well as
machines. His own creed was simple: Business is not
inconsistent with Christianity, but the latter ought to
be a help to the former, giving confidence and resignation
after using all proper means/

Such of his enormous correspondence as I have read
gives a fascinating perspective of the scope of Mc-
Cormick s mind. His public letters, as for example on
the Seminary, are forcible, logical, conclusive, and highly

80 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

combative. His mental processes are indicative not only
of a great breadth of vision, but of an assuredness that
is superb. One cannot read his massing of evidence upon
some obscure point of religious controversy, or upon the
reaper, without realizing that he was as much himself
convinced by his own argument as he was convincing.
His private letters are hurried, compact, and very much
abbreviated. His style was a kind of shoi thancl that tells
much of the productively crowded state of his mind.
Being a great man, he was not too big for as close atten
tion to details as to the broader aspects of affairs. He
shows himself to have been as constructively interested
in such matters as the health of his manufacturing staff
or the state of national unity. His many letters to his
well-loved brother William indicate how close he was to
the details of his business. They are filled with discus
sions of those little points which executives theoretically
overlook. But not he: for the reaper was his life.

McCormick never held public office, but he was ever
keenly interested in the practice of government. As a
Southerner, it was natural that his affiliations should
lie with the Democratic Party. An intimate friend of
Horace Greeley, he was largely Instrumental in aiding
that great journalist to argue the case for pacific settle
ment of the dispute between the North and the South.
When the combat which he abhorred could not longer be
avoided, he deemed it his privilege to try to bring the
warring halves of the Nation together again and spent
much time preparing a basis for settlement. He thought
of the Nation as an economic unit that should not be
divided.

Similarly, by investment and moral support he helped
in the completion of the first transcontinental railway
system, the Union Pacific; and he was one of the first of

THE PIONEER 81

those men who stood out for the construction of an
Isthmian Canal. The development of the Pacific Coast
States was a matter at that time beyond any selfish com
mercial consideration. Nevertheless, the conception of a
strong, united, far-flung nation appealed mightily to his
imagination. It may have been as well that his experi
ments in politics never carried him beyond the ownership
of two Chicago newspapers, the Times and the Exposi
tor ; and it is not improbable that his powerful influence
was more effective as a layman than if, as his friends
wished, he had become Senator. After all, his crowded
life may have seemed full enough as it was.

There have been few busier men than Cyrus Hall
McCormick. No great pioneer has ever been satisfied
with an inconclusive life, nor can the possible limits of
an active mind be measured in usual terms. A pioneer
seeks the remote fastnesses of the unknown because his
brain compels him. McCormick invented the reaper and
straightway leaped from a Virginia farm to national
prominence. He devised ways to manufacture his ma
chine. He pioneered American business toward mod
ern advertising, a bold warranty of product, and a broad
system of credit to the customer. He organized quality,
canvassing, and service. He envisioned the infancy of
foreign trade and labored for its development. He found
time for interest in religious, political, and public affairs.
In addition to all these matters, he was able to give real
attention to the details of the private lives of an immense
number of friends, business associates, and dependents.
It will never be known how many people sought him out
with petty problems, how many troubled men found re
assurance in his readily offered store of experience and
wisdom. In his last years, when ill health confined him
to his house, he was wont to hold a court of counsel in

82 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

the afternoon. His parlor would be full of people seeking
interviews. One after another would be ushered in to
him as he sat in his wheel chair, bringing their problems
to the judgment seat of his wisdom. No one was ever
turned away the great mind was big enough for all and
his sympathy never waned. But once when his infant
son was carried in he forgot all else. Take him away/ he
said to his wife, if you want me to have attention for
these other matters.

His marriage in 1857 was one of the happier moments in
a life that must seem too much drawn upon by crowding
events. During all his younger days he eschewed the so
ciety of women. Tall, handsome, dark-haired, impressive
in face and figure, a lion of a man in any company, he
might have chosen from among the circles of the great.
But he had dedicated his career to the business of the
reaper and perhaps he felt that the pleasures of feminine
companionship were not for him. Yet, when he was
forty-eight, he met young Nancy Fowler who was visiting
friends in Chicago, was captivated, and married her. Of
my revered grandmother I shall have more to relate in
another place. Suffice it now to say that, however much
Cyrus Hall McCormick may have dedicated his being to
great deeds of service, he found in this girl the equal of
himself.

Never has there been a man whose days were more
consecrated to the work he had made his own. It was his
custom to awake at five, consider his problems in the
solitude of early morning, and spend the usual waking
hours in consultation with his associates and subordi
nates. After supper he would sleep for two hours in his
chair and then, until midnight, he would again engage in
interviews and discussions. In these conferences he some
times seemed deliberate in making up his mind, but once

THE PIONEER 83

he reached a decision, his purpose was adamant. He
practically never went out : the world came to him with
its problems and its hopes. He never enjoyed any relaxa
tion except music, never sought the diversion of the
theater or society. His purpose in life was so single that
he would not hunt a way to those idle mental pastures
which men seek for recreation or for growth. He found
his rest in activity.

We in this generation have time for those problems
only which can be classified by secretaries and organized
into systems. He never had a secretary. His wife copied
his voluminous letters; his eldest son represented him
when he could not be in two places at once. His filing
cabinet was his brain or the drawer of his desk. With
none of the conveniences which we employ to facilitate
our labor, he invented and conducted a business and still
maintained mental energy enough to keep an intimate
contact with a dozen other matters. Each of these de
manded a volume of correspondence that would terrify
any one not equipped with typewriters and the like. Each
of them received his full attention and his interest. Each
of them was vital to his mentality. The secret of his
grasp of affairs unquestionably lay in his breadth and
force of mind he could grasp so much more than
average men that his thought was not exhausted, but
flourished, rather, under the stimulus of activity.

Perhaps Cyrus Hall McCormick was one of those rare
men who, in the eyes of weaker mortals, are afflicted with
a disease of superactivity. Napoleon was such a man, one
of whom other men stood and still stand in awe.
He could do without sleep, make plans with an unerring
aim at success, attend to a score of petty details without
losing the perspective of his broad objective, rule destiny
as it were and still remain unfatigued and competent.

84 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

No subject was too small for Inclusion within the sweep
of Oliver Cromwell s intellect. Lincoln possessed under
standing as well as courage and a supreme vision of pur
pose that showed him conclusions far beyond the reach
of an average mind. Theodore Roosevelt, as much as any
man, combined the vigor of innumerable activities with
the force of swift and sure decision; and both with an
almost unhuman ability to stretch his intelligence and
appreciation to unbelievable limits. So, also, the pioneers
who adventured across the Atlantic to discover America,
or toiled over the plains to find the limits of the West,
were urged onward by the force of their own unleashed
energy. One and all, they could carry more in their great
minds than normal men. The scope of their activity
was not limited by their bodily strength nor did they
possess a finite power of absorption. They were success
fully, supremely, finely superactive. And so, too, was
McCormick.

The number of lawsuits in which he engaged is an in
teresting commentary on the tenacious vigor of the man.
Their total would appall a pacifist. He crossed legal
swords with the United States Patent Office, with
Hussey, with Seymour and Morgan, with Manny, and
with numberless other men. Almost always he lost, but
ever he sued or was sued because of an inherent
faith in the justice of his cause. Call him stubborn if you
will, or determined or militant: once he had embarked
upon a course planned after using all proper means/ he
could not be swerved from his objective. He did not
fight for the mere joy of victory, but for the more desir
able aim of justice. His sense of justice was so strong
that it gave intensity to his purpose, strength to his will,
and nerved him through the long trials of unending per
severance. He had awe and reverence for those things

THE PIONEER 85

which are true and right. His thorough conviction that
justice must prevail made him insensible to reproach and
impatient of delay. Justice, of course, was required to
measure up to his own reading of the evidence but
it is in such strength of character that the foundations of
success are formed.

One of the most character-revealing lawsuits in which
he engaged was concerned with what he deemed an over
charge for certain excess baggage on a trip. Enraged, he
refused to pay, left the train, and the trunks went on to
Chicago without him, to be burned by fire next day. He
sued the railway for their value, and then, because his
cause immediately became a matter of principle, fought
it for over twenty years. In the end, just before his
death, he won; and he had spent five times the amount
of the damages his estate received. Judged by its result,
this litigation may seem purposeless. Perhaps but
even so it is something to believe so bravely in the justice
of your position and in its attainment.

A man who thus fights his way through life, beating
down opposition with an intolerant disregard, must neces
sarily make personal enemies. It is safe to say that his
business competitors hated him, partly because of jeal
ousy for his success and partly because of his ruthless
championing of the cause of his reaper. The same quali
ties are at the root of his failure as a politician. But hard
as he might be toward an enemy, he always fought his
battles in the open : he never in his life spoke disparag
ingly of a man behind his back.

Consider the environment from which McCormick
sprang: a Virginia farm. But rural life and rural com
munities have ever furnished the vitality of the Nation.
Streets and country highways were then unpaved lanes.
Houses were simple, with tall doors and narrow windows,

86 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

unaffected as yet by the architectural outreachings of a
more sophisticated age. Pulpit and post office came to
the people jogging a-horseback with the circuit-rider or
the contract mail carrier. The village store contained
only the barest necessaries of life and not one of the
varied luxuries of to-day s drug store or corner grocery.
There was no railway station in such a community, no
garage, no moving-picture palace but always a church,
always a school, always a blacksmith shop. Of food, there
was more than sufficient if crops were good, but it was
home-grown, guiltless of the cannery or the packing
house; and the simple clothing, perhaps even the Sun
day best, was homespun and homesewn. There was no
leisure class, for to work for one s livelihood was as
natural as to breathe.

Change the picture: It is now Chicago of 1884. We
vision the growing, eager, young city instead of the farm
and the village. The quiet brick house has become a
brownstone mansion decorated with carved paneling and
the art of Europe. Presbyterian ism and Democracy
hurry here for counsel, and the tall reception rooms are
thronged with seekers come to ask for aid and gain relief.
Cyrus Hall McCormick wears the button of the Legion
of Honor, and he has grown rich, but he is still working.
The blacksmith shop where his strong young arm beat
out a chariot for his fame has become a mighty factory
energized by his intellect. The farmer boy has become
chief citizen among Chicago s thousands.

His reaper has served him well ; so he goes on serving
serving the need of the farmer for relief from labor, an
swering the cry of the world for bread. His work is done;
he must lay down his own share of service. The pioneer
must give over his fight. But his work will live.

Life, 7 McCormick told his wife as he lay dying in

THE PIONEER 87

1884, l is a battle/ He had not found it easy. He gained
from it wealth and fame and leadership among men ; but
he put into the struggle as much as he took out of it.
Most of all, it seems to me, his success is indicative of the
triumph imagination may gain over the obstacles of sloth
and blind prejudice and the legion of those things which
are held to be impossible simply because no one has yet
accomplished them. Abstract qualities are, after all, the
ultimate test. McCormick did not invent the reaper
simply because he was a natural mechanic, nor devise his
novel business methods purely because he had something
to sell. He had a constructive genius spurred on by the
overwhelming reach of his imagination. He could, by its
aid, have been equally successful in any other age or
place.

There is invariably something fine and challenging in
being the first in a field. We whose lives are so settled by
the limitations of environment, cannot but respect a
pioneering spirit. We envy its ability to project itself
into the unknown and to gain tangible satisfaction out
of the reach of imagination. Throughout all history such
imagination as McCormick s has taught men many
things. It has freed their thought from the shackles of
precedent, led their minds into untrodden paths, helped
them through valleys of indecision and over mountains
of doubt. Imagination cannot be defeated, for it is free;
nor circumscribed, for it is illimitable. It has given the
world the means to satisfy all those wants civilization has
created. Relief from the pains of labor is one of the most
poignant of these; an improved standard of living is
another. As men developed out of the primitive first
into families and then into nations, they found means to
express their desires ; and when a certain few became in
dividuals beyond and above the horde of average beings,

88 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

our system of life has permitted them to develop. Then
comes the crucial test of worth. If the imagination of the
rare individual is of permanent value, the effect of his
work the record of his mental stature will live on
after him. It will even increase because of the fine founda
tion he has provided.

So it was with Cyrus Hall McCormick. His outstand
ing personality links the reaper with the solution of the
problems of our clay. He died before the tractor was
dreamed of or mass production was named ; but his reaper
and the business he built were together the progenitors
both of a new agriculture and a new concept of industry.
However much he accomplished by his own strength, his
greatest contribution to the world lies in the fact that the
fire of service lit by his imagination burns ever more
brightly because of his example.

CHAPTER VI

THE HARVESTER WAR

EARLY on an April morning of 1885, a muttering crowd
gathered around the barred gates of McCormick Works.
For days the workmen had been on strike. They did not
know what their grievances were, but, as happens in labor
troubles, an aggressive minority had taught fear to the
many who did not want to lay down their tools. There
had been inflaming speeches by avowed anarchists, ora
tors who spoke English with mid-European gutturals,
about capitalism and the solidarity of the masses. The
men were told that their brothers on the street cars and in
other factories of Chicago were seething with revolt. The
city was in the throes of a newspaper quarrel, a recent
panic had left its scars on the financial sinews of the com
munity, and the class hatred which was soon to flare into
the tragedy known as the Haymarket Riot was stirring.
Seen from the employer s point of view, the city-wide
labor disturbances of the hour were a shocking commen
tary on the instability of political unionism ; viewed from
the standpoint of the worker, it seemed almost impossible
to save enough from low wages to buy bread.

A report traveled through the district that troops might
come to protect the factory gates from a rumored attack
by the strikers; and they, ready to resist force with force,
had collected such arms as they could. They glared up
Blue Island Avenue toward the city and waited. A buggy
appeared, trotting down the long street; but, expecting to
hear the tramp of the militia, they paid it no attention. A
young man, bearded and smiling and apparently carefree,
drove up. In the face of his confident geniality, and be-

90 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

cause he was alone, the crowd parted. He waved a good
morning, spoke to his horse, and drove through the press
to the gate of McCormick Works. Not recognizing him,
the crowd gasped at his temerity. He gave an order to the
guard within, the gate swung back with a rattle of loos
ened chains, and he entered. In a moment he reappeared
and called to the milling crowd, Come on in, boys, if you
want to work. The gate is open.

That man was Cyrus H. McCormick, son of the in
ventor of the reaper, my father. It is a matter of record
that shortly thereafter he raised wages and dismissed the
superintendent whose harshness had brewed what real
trouble there was.

Cyrus H. McCormick was chosen president of the
McCormick Harvesting Machine Company immediately
after the death of his father in 1884. As may well be
imagined, he, a young man of twenty-five, found it no
easy task to step into the place of one of the Nation s
leading industrialists. To aid him, he had five years of ex
perience as his father s confidential secretary and represen
tative. He was not unacquainted with the routine of the
harvester business, having in his first year at work been
entrusted with the monumental task of getting an Apple-
by-designed McCormick binder into immediate produc
tion. He had been in Europe in the interests of the busi
ness, had learned to take life seriously because his father
would have it so, and had already proved himself to have
a calmer, more adaptable point of view than the man who
had fought and won the war of the reapers. And yet the
son, who was designed by nature for peaceful ways, was to
be called to lead his organization through such a fight as
the father had never known.

The younger McCormick also had as his best ally the
unfaltering support of his mother. Had she lived in other

NETTIE FOWLER McCORMICK

Wife of the inventor
From a photograph made about 1870

THE HARVESTER WAR 91

times, Nettie F. McCormick would have headed the busi
ness herself, or done any one of those things which women
now do because they are not merely respected, but are
more nearly accorded their deserts. Less than fifty years
old in that day, she had been her husband s right hand
through half of his business life. Faithful to his every
point of view, she had made his interests her own. Re
nowned for her beauty throughout the courts of Europe,
strong in the councils of men, sweet in her understanding
of human problems, wise in her farsightedness and knowl
edge of affairs, she was everything she should have been
to be the wife of a pioneer and a leader herself a great
American.

There were few details of the growing business that
escaped her. Her correspondence is full of business wis
dom beyond the usual interest of women. Consider also
one entry in my father s diary, noting an interview he and
the general manager of the company had with her at Rich
field Springs, New York: Butler and I talked with
Mother about (i) Pearson Twine Mill question; (2)
Indianapolis investment in land for an office building; (3)
Proposal to buy a house for B. and his family; (4) Lawsuit
against Farwell, etc. ; (5) Proposition to buy an interest or
whole ownership of coal lands at Des Moines, Iowa.

American business grew up because its captains, of
whom she certainly was one, were not afraid of the details
of their affairs. All her life she thus concerned herself with
the bricks of the rising structure of the McCormick
family business. Even in her last years, I have many
times seen her sons go into secret council with her over
some matter that troubled them. At the time of her
funeral in 1923, many of her personal friends could find
no room in the church it was filled with the Harvester
associates whom she loved.

92 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

In 1884, there were many pressing issues to solve.
There was the matter of the Marquis L. Gorham patents,
which anticipated the Applcby twine-binding device in
certain respects and had taken on new importance after
Gotham s death. McCormick paid Mrs. Gorham $100,000
for them, added them to a pool of patents, and sold
manufacturing rights to all competitors. The young
president also settled the Gordon case for an infringe
ment upon rights owned by the Gordon brothers and
IX M. Osborne. Because it was feared that the check
for $225,000 in settlement of the claim might be photo
graphed and used for hostile advertisement, the McCor
mick attorneys paid the account in small bills. Mr. Os
borne stayed late to count the money, carried the satchel
containing it to his hotel for the night, lugged it back to
Auburn, and there enjoyed what triumph he could by
exhibiting it to his men.

During the decade from 1885 to 1895, the implement
manufacturers gave much attention to experimental
work on freak types of machines. There was the McCor
mick center-draft mower which, in theory but not in prac
tice, had less side-draft than the standard mower; and a
steel binder cut down to weigh less than thirteen hundred
pounds, which tested well in its trials, but proved too
fragile for actual field use. William N. Whitely rebelled
when he was asked to pay royalties under the Gorham
patents and worked assiduously on a complicated, deli
cate machine dubbed The Strassburg Clock by his
rivals. Later on, there were numberless attempts to build
a low-down grain binder to obviate the necessity of
elevating the grain over the main wheel McCormick
actually began production of what was called a bincllo-
chine/ and, when it gave evidence of failure, put forth
another attempt called a tylochine, Deering gave much

THE HARVESTER WAR 93

attention to one named The Prairie Chicken, but it
never got out of the experimental room.

The most noteworthy of the many freak eff orts was Mo
Cormick s nearly successful attempt to swing the trade to
a right-hand binder. Except for the accident of the
reaper tradition, there is no reason why the cutter bar of a
grain binder should extend to the left of the main wheel.
The platform on all modern tractor-drawn apparatus pro
jects naturally to the right, as does the bar of a mower ; but
since its inception the standard binder has cut to the left.
As competition grew keener, it seemed to be imperative to
have new features to talk about, hence the effort to build
freak machines. In the middle Nineties, McCormick sud
denly and without warning swung its binder production
to right-hand harvesters. So great was the pressure of
the McCormick sales organization that for a time it ap
peared as if the effort would succeed ; but to save them
selves the competitors all leagued against it and invented
arguments to answer those invented by the newly con
verted adherents of right-hand harvesting. McCormick
might be the leading company, but it could not quite pre
vail against the united resistance of all its rivals; and so,
in a year or two, it gave over the attempt.

All this experimental effort quite naturally involved an
enormous number of field trials. Matters of design had
not yet been at all reduced to a science, and many of the
new features that were rushed into production and then
out to the trade gave the salesmen some momentary vocal
advantage. But the improvements were often so hastily
prepared that they could not be developed. When a
mistake was made, it was incumbent on the territorial
experts to correct it in the field. No one could afford to
admit failure; or, perhaps, acute salesmanship would
conceal a mechanical defect. Every company grasped

94 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

at any straw anything that seemed to promise some
advantage over competitors. Therefore, the managers of
the harvesting machine companies were continually in
the field checking the operation of new devices.

The idea of private field tests and public trials was
inherent in the McCormick business psychology. All
through the sales force there existed the dominant belief
that if they could once get their beloved machine in the
field, it would easily demonstrate its superiority. Thus, at
the time of the World s Columbian Exposition, when the
jury wished to make awards without taking the exhibits
into grain or grass, the McCormick protest was so vehe
ment that tests were hastily organized. Perhaps one
reason for this was that the whole McCormick organiza
tion, out of its sixth sense for the niceties of selling,
may have been more experimental-minded than its com
petitors. At all events, there never was a harvest in all
the years between 1884 and 1902 when Cyrus H. Mc-
Cormick s diary fails to record trips to the field to follow
new work. Even in 1902, when he went to New York in
midsummer to participate in the formation of the Inter
national Harvester Company, we find him, three days
after the signing of the papers, on an Illinois farm, calmly
and as usual attending tests of tedders, rakes, and new
types of binder knottcrs.

McCormick and Deering corn binders were first heard
of publicly at the Chicago World s Fair, but none were
sold until 1895. The addition of the new implement, a
vital factor in so wide a district, was an important event
for the field force. Numberless new claims of superiority
could be made, numberless new field trials could be staged
to prove them. There is an amusing story of the introduc
tion of the rival machines into Iowa which I quote from
the report of the McCormick salesman who was there,
anxiously awaiting the hour of the public trial :

CYRUS H. McCORMICK

Eldest son of the inventor

THE HARVESTER WAR 95

.We naturally thought we would do the better work, and even
to this day I think we did; but that made no difference the
selection of the judges was what counted. The Deering fellows
chose a man by the name of Mclntosh, who was a gentleman
farmer in the summer and an evangelist preacher in the winter.
Needless to say, our judge was well primed before the contest.
The third man was picked right on the ground the day of the
show. They thought they had us, but they placed too much
confidence in their man Mclntosh. That morning, before we
went out to the field, I got hold of him and had a long talk with
him about corn binders, explaining the superior merits of the
McCormick over the Deering. I was accustomed to selling
goods to farmers in those days and was able to convince him
that he had made a mistake in lining up with the Deering fel
lows. He promised me with both hands up that he was well
sold and that he would stick. He stuck. When the judges were
asked to decide the contest, our man voted for us, the third
man voted for Deering, and Mclntosh said the McCormick
was the best machine. My own opinion is that he was lucky he
got away with his life that night.

The opportunity for feats of this kind is not necessarily
one-sided. A few years before this corn-binder trial there
was a village which may as well be nameless - peopled
largely with German Catholics. They were building a new
church, and the Deering traveler was invited fay his
dealer to donate to the funds, inasmuch as the McCormick
traveler had prevailed upon his company to give $20. So
the traveler and the dealer wrote to Mr. William Deer
ing about the matter and, because he was a strict Method
ist, also dropped the hint that McCormick was selling
more machines in the district than all other companies
combined. By return mail they received Mr. Deering s
check for $250. So when the church was dedicated, the
priest exhibited the check and made some very compli
mentary remarks about our very good friend, Mr. Wil
liam Deering, of Chicago/

96 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

As it so happened, the annual village picnic took place
a few days later, and the helpful traveler lavishly bought
beer for his friends and (following the usual practice of
those days) for potential customers as well. After a time
excitement reigned and a song was extemporized, the re
frain of which had something to do with McCormick $20,
Deering $250. The salesman took orders for twelve
binders and thought it legitimate to add an item to his
expense account, Beer, $io/ But the auditor in Chicago
was conversant with Mr. Deering s personal antipathy to
alcohol and wrote coldly for an explanation.

The dealer helped the traveler compose a complete
narrative of the whole affair from the clay the letter was
sent asking for a donation to the new church. A some
what reserved reply advised that under the circumstances
the charge could stand, but that no item showing that it
was for beer would ever again be allowed. On each annual
picnic day thereafter through the years there was an item
on the traveler s expense account, Sundries, $io/ No
explanation was ever asked and Deering continued to
outsell McCormick.

These were what might be called practical rather than
theoretical methods of distribution. They illustrate the
finer side of the old art of salesmanship, for one cannot so
effectively change a man s convictions unless one has faith
one s self. The framework of the modern sales system had
been completed by then and the stream of implement
supply was supposed to flow from the company general
agency through the dealer to the farmer. But the satura
tion point of natural absorption had been reached about
1890, and the production capacities of the sixteen larger
companies fighting for the business was far in excess of the
normal demand. The jobber had already disappeared in
the face of the desire of the companies to own their own

THE HARVESTER WAR 97

branches and thus get closer to the ultimate consumer.
Such a system of distribution tied up much invested capi
tal in property and stocks of machines and bore heavily
on treasuries which were none too robust. The better
companies with the most easily salable product required
at least one hundred and fifty dollars of capital to do one
hundred dollars of annual business, while many of the
smaller organizations needed two hundred dollars. They
all had to try to find ways of increasing their volume to
help carry the load. Hence it was that convincing sales
men of the type of the Deering blockman, or of him who
persuaded Mclntosh to stick, were in demand.

The rank and file of the McCormick field force were
past masters at the art of salesmanship, and it may be
that many of the extreme methods practiced upon them
(they soon learned to give back as much as they had to
take) were a direct reaction from their success. An ex-
Deering general agent has told me how hopeless it was for
him to go against the pressure of four surrounding Mc
Cormick branches especially since time was to choose
two International Harvester presidents and one vice
president from among the four. Frequently, even, this
expert sales pressure proved stronger than the company
itself had anticipated and the demand for goods was
larger than the company could supply. Deering pos
sessed the complementary advantage of a far-seeing man
ufacturing policy and was willing to take chances by
making machines further in advance. It is also possible
that Deering more accurately estimated the great future
growth the industry was to experience, partly on account
of the general revival of business following the McKinley
election in 1896, and partly as a result of the sales pressure
exerted by all of the companies in general and by Mc
Cormick in particular.

98 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

The McCormick ability to sell goods originated largely
in an unswerving adherence to the principle of getting out
into the territory to look for business. The first agents
established throughout the West were usually stationed in
county towns where farmers would congregate to attend
to their legal and commercial affairs. Before 1890, there
were few railways other than transcontinental lines, and
it would have been purposeless to establish a network
of dealers who could not be reached. Thus the county
agent, as he was called, came to foci he had a monopoly
on the business in his district; and, furthermore, he was
accustomed to having the farmers come in from the coun
try and seek him out. As the network of railways spread
across the West, outlying communities began to be de
veloped, agents in smaller towns could be reached, and the
harvesting-machine business began to drift into the hands
of men who would go out after it. It is perhaps needless
to say that as soon as a railway penetrated a new district,
one of the first passengers to alight at a hitherto isolated
community was a McCormick representative looking for
a dealer.

The McCormick Company had in previous years built
up the best force of county agents, but by 1890 they had
become an outworn institution. Harvesting-machinery
distribution could not be fostered by a stay-at-home dealer
waiting in his store for business to come to him. More
intensive local distribution was demanded. The only
type of dealer acceptable to the McCormick traveler was
one who would canvass every inch of his territory as
aggressively as could be clone before the advent of the
motor-car. Thus again, as in the early days of the reaper,
the ever-efficient triumvirate of pioneer agriculture,
aggressive local commerce, and an able industrial policy
working from afar, was collaborating to develop farm life
on the prairies.

THE HARVESTER WAR 99

The former methods of advertising, such as catalogues,
testimonials, and lists of available prospects, were broad
ened to suit the new situation. Propaganda which de
pended on innuendo and inference as much as upon direct
statement was introduced. Thus, Deering made much of
a supposed history of the reaper, minimizing or omitting
the 1831 invention. McCormick s reply was a direct ap
peal to public opinion. Here, for example, is a picture of
one of the first of the * delivery days which soon became a
regular part of farm implement propaganda:

Every man who bought one of our machines was to take de
livery of it on the same day. He was to bring in his family to
town and we were to give them all a good dinner and a good big
day, and the machines were all to be put in line on the street.
We had three hundred McCormick binders in the procession.
It was a beautiful day, as fine as the Lord ever made. I hired
three bands and put big banners and streamers across the
street. I put five or six beautiful floats in the parade and rode
myself in a big two-seated carriage. I guess I was a bigger man
that day in Carroll than the President of the United States. I
gave the town about the biggest day of its history. I engaged
all the Ladies Aid Societies to cook the dinner, hired the thea
ter, gave them a nice little vaudeville turn, and made a speech
which the audience was good enough to applaud I presume
because I was paying for it!

Business methods of this kind are perhaps highly
picturesque and they are legitimate, judged even by the
standards of these more conservative days. Neverthe
less, they represent the type of salesmanship which put
all competitors and all dealers too much on their mettle to
get business. Therefore, before the harvester war ended
with the formation of the International Harvester Com
pany, competition changed from hard rivalry to unending
strife. Salesmanship became a brave but vicious battle in
which it was deemed that loyalty to one s company de-

zoo THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

manded that organized hate be the order of the day.
Friendships were broken ; rivals refused to drink a glass at
the same bar; any means that would down a competitor
was considered legitimate; prices were slaughtered in
discriminately and without regard to profits; funds were
squandered on senseless attempts to prove superiority;
and business was habitually conducted in a way that
brought the industry to the verge of bankruptcy. The
final result of the harvester war was to be consolidation
or destruction.

> It is not necessary to infer that, officially, there ever
was such a period as that which I have called the harvester
war, any more than there ever was an officially admitted
feud between McCormick and Hussey or McCormick and
Manny. But the inventor s correspondence bristles with
enough hostility toward these two men, and indeed to
ward all those competitors who he believed had trans
gressed upon his private preserve, to have permitted com
mentators to characterize the business quarrels of the
early days as the xvar of the reapers. Similarly, however
suave the official record may seem, the recollections of the
men who were engaged in the harvesting-machine business
in the Nineties bristle with enough charge and counter
charge, attack and defensive-offensive, cut and thrust, to
have characterized a dozen decent military engagements.
Like produces like. The harvester men of the middle
period were skilled in that kind of training they had re
ceived from their warring predecessors. Their descend
ants of to-day have, with different and more cultivated
weapons, fought as bitter, though not as dreadful, a
battle. I have no compunction in calling the record of
those years a harvester war.

Perhaps, if the device of the field test had never been
propounded, there would not have been any harvester

THE HARVESTER WAR 101

war; but then this story would have been less picturesque.
In former times it had been McCormick and Hussey who
stormed England and captured columns in the press for
their arena. Now it was McCormick versus Deering or
McCormick versus Champion or Milwaukee or Wood or
some one else. Always, it was McCormick, the great ex
ponent of salesmanship^ on one side, and some one else on
the other striving to take away the leadership which Mc
Cormick possessed. The war was certainly severe; but
the men of to-day s old guard are willing to remember
those years as the good old days/ Much benefit in
cluding Harvester Spirit and present-day service to farm
ers came out of them, so perhaps they need not be
regretted.

Take Whitely, for example, who for a time after the
death of Cyrus Hall McCormick performed such prodigi
ous acts that he was called The Reaper King/ His chief
feat, which won him his first fame, was to hitch himself in
the place of a horse and himself pull one of his mowers to
prove its light draft. Perhaps he had heard of the deeds
of one of the brothers Marsh, who once, unaided, bound
an acre of grain in fifty-five minutes to demonstrate the
simplicity of the early harvester. It was men of this type,
men like the first Crusaders, who not only led their fol
lowers into war, but themselves swung the heaviest battle-
axe, who made field tests spectacular. They even devised
the ultimate test of merit in which two reapers, chained
together back to back, were pulled apart to prove their
strength.

Concerning the field tests of the Nineties, when the rest
of the harvesting-machine world was trying to wrest from
McCormick the supremacy it had won, a former factory
repair man writes : No friendly rivalry out on the firing
line lots of dirty tricks pulled off, tinkering with rival

102 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

machines at night. Many a pitched battle I have heard
the field men tell about. Who won the field trials? Why,
Deering, I suppose; at least, I never heard of any one else
winning! They were loyal to their cause, those men of
old!

There is the story of Champion s great effort with a
new mower, produced in 1899, when it challenged all
comers and laid down the rule that the machines striving
for the prize were to be operated by a competitor s em
ployee, driven against a solid post, and were then to cut
grass. McCormick took up the challenge and we were
the only competitor who did. Our first go was at Clare, a
little town in Webster County, Iowa. We had an expert
named Dan who was a fearless fellow. When he drove
their mower against the post, the cutter bar bent right
back between the wheels. He drove the team with such
speed against the post that it broke the shoe and they
nearly went mad. Their driver broke the pole off our
machine, and there were the two machines practically
a wreck/

Such tests may seem ridiculous in the light of to-day s
practices which seek to keep machinery in order and to
prove its worth by operation; but to-day s are not the
means of the good old days when competing salesmen
sought to sell machines by direct methods. There is the
tale of a farmer who, to his sorrow, let it be known in a
group of machine men that he was a prospect for a grain
binder. So persistent were they in their clamoring for at
tention that the poor man was soon constrained to seek
refuge in a hotel room. When the slight protection of a
locked door availed him nothing against the swarm of
canvassers, he jumped out of the window.

In truth, the field men of the competing companies
could not be restrained by such a thing as company regu-

THE HARVESTER WAR 103

lations when they were out after business. Policies were
swayed by an army of fighters to whom results were the
only test. Competition grew so severe and unbusiness
like that the members of the leading organizations be
came enemies, not in a personal sense, but, like soldiers,
believing that the thing had to be done. Anything the
old-time men could do to the other fellow to knock him
out was considered legitimate. At one time the various
company presidents issued a joint order, over their own,
well-recognizable signatures, to cease the breaking-up of
competitors 7 sales but the fight went on.

It became customary for a farmer who had bought one
make of binder to receive a call from the salesman of an
other company, who would then seek to convince him of
the futility of ever expecting to gather his harvest with
the make of implement he had just acquired. If the sales
man was a good talker and most of them were the
farmer would be persuaded to haul the first implement
back to town on some charge of poor operation and buy
the rival. There is a bizarre tale of a farmer who bought
one type, but woke up next morning to find quite another
make standing in his yard and his own purchase nowhere
to be seen. In a certain district, even, a wrecking crew
was maintained to tamper with rival machines and create
dissatisfaction with their performance.

To illustrate the combination of true commercial fight
ing worth and the uneconomic ridiculousness of un
bridled competition, I repeat a rather long story of what
happened after a certain McCormick binder had been
sold not far from Pomeroy, Iowa. The story comes from
the general agent who fought that day for the honor of his
cause :

Our dealer telegraphed me that Champion had pulled into
the same field where he had sold an eight-foot McCormick

104 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

binder and that the situation was desperate, as they were try
ing to break up our sale. When I got there, the farmer was in
trouble with our machine, and the Champion boys had put
plenty of poison in him about me. He was swearing loudly and
wouldn t speak to me, so I waited. When I got a chance I
talked to him mildly, which seemed to surprise him after the
reputation as a bluffer those fellows had given me. I showed
him where his four-horse eveners were not put on right, with
the result that two horses were pulling the whole load. Finally
I got the eveners fixed and loosened up the compressor so the
machine worked satisfactorily. But Champion had made him
some kind of a special price; also, they had notified every pur
chaser of a McCormick binder in the neighborhood to come
and see this binder fail, with a view of getting them to cancel
their McCormick orders.

I pointed out to the farmer that the Champion was a six-foot
cut against our eight, and showed him that even so the Cham
pion was not taking a full cut. The crop was barley, and it had
crinkled down and lay like a crow s nest. The soil was an old
peat bog that had burned, and now it was a very slippery job. I
had my work cut out for me to make the eight-foot binder oper
ate without choking. So that night I got up at three o clock,
drove out to the farm and woke the farmer up. He was dressed
only in his old hickory shirt that he had been wearing the previ
ous day, because pajamas and nightgowns were not yet fash
ionable in his neighborhood. He put on his pants and came out
to the barn and we had a long talk. I gave him such a sales talk
he was absolutely convinced the McCormick machine was the
one he wanted. No difference what the Champion would be
able to do next day, it was settled.

Well, a big crowd of machine men had come to the hotel that
night and the Deering fellows said they would come in too and
show us both up. There were at least one hundred and fifty
farmers there, and the Deering was the first to start. They had
a brand-new machine and four big gray horses, and the horses
and the machine were decorated with little flags. But when the
first bundle of tangled barley came through the binder, it
choked and the bull wheel buried itself in the slippery soil and
they were done. The farmer was driving our binder himself and
was having no trouble, although I am not prepared to say

THE HARVESTER WAR 105

whether he cut a full eight feet all the way around or not. But
the Champion dealer got a handful of straw and tried to put
it secretly on our elevator chains, to prove his claim that our
chains would pull grain out of our open elevator and wind it
around the sprockets. I grabbed him by the neck and he fell
down in the stubble. Then the Champion fellows started for
me, but somebody got between us. They started to abuse the
farmer, who was a big, powerful man, and he struck the Cham
pion dealer. His old father stopped the fight. But the contest
broke up in a row, and they left in disgrace without having
driven us from the field.

That general agent has, with the passing of time, gained
a different perspective on the feats of his younger, more
embattled years. He ends thus his account of what must
have been an ofttimes repeated skirmish :

This story is related simply to give an idea of the expense of
doing business in those days and to what silly lengths excessive
competition led us in those ridiculous fights. I suppose we were
just a product of those times.

There can be no question that under such a system the
cost of making a sale was high. Sometimes two rival
general agents would rouse themselves to battle and, re
gardless of instructions from the home office, would slash
prices in a progressive and widening effort to get the
upper hand of a competitor. In Grand Rapids in 1899, f r
example, grain binders were sold for half the standard
wholesale price. It should be remarked that the Mc-
Cormick men now say they then invariably acted on the
defensive. But if I know them at all, their defense of their
traditional leadership was vigorous, to say the least.

Another tale suggests how unfavorably this inordinate
pressure to sell machines t must have affected credits, A
harvesting-machine man was driving through an isolated
part of Nebraska and saw a new Milwaukee binder in a

io6 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

friend s yard. Knowing this farmer had no grain at all to
cut, the traveler stopped to inquire. The farmer had
wanted a hammer and a wrench and had no money to buy
them nor any credit; so he bought the binder, all on time,
to get the tool box !

It must not be thought that business excesses of this
kind were perpetrated by a horde of city-bred, factory-
trained men who did not know farming conditions. The
members of the harvesting-machine field armies were
recruited in the country and themselves supplied the
material from which the executive staffs of another
business generation were drawn. Many a lowly expert/
announcing himself proudly to the farmers as a factory
man, was a farmer boy who had shown himself capable of
remedying his own mechanical troubles. Machinery was
a mysterious thing to farmers, and an owner s diagnosis
of trouble was usually wrong. Hence the invariably neces
sary practice of fixing the farmer first. Nevertheless,
the mechanical success of the experts was, on the whole,
remarkable. They fought the harvester war as bitterly
and as blithely as did the salesmen and they believed as
profoundly in the innate justice of their particular cause.
Witness, for example, the expert known across Ontario
for his skill who, un tactfully but loyally, interrupted a
farmer s complaint with Aw you don t know what th
hell you re talking about. This machine was made by the
best company in the world and was made to work and it
will work. Let me get at it !

The methods of the harvester war were unquestion
ably undesirable. They can be excused only because the
generation which developed them to the wildest extent
had inherited the spirit of warfare from revered forbears.
They were not countenanced by the heads of the Mc-
Cormick or Deering or other companies, but they were,

THE HARVESTER WAR 107

nevertheless, a tribute to the loyalty which those leaders
inspired in their men. It was not merely ambition which
led those old boys through sacrifice to beat one another
to a sale, or into subterfuge to defeat a competitor. The
men of the old companies never cared to meet a rival
socially, and they would willingly neglect their private
lives to advance the interests of their house. Many of
them have gone ahead and some are still active in posi
tions of high responsibility. But it was not chance for
promotion that inspired them to endure the rigors of
the furious days of bitter competition it was loyalty.
Loyalty builds character and it is also possible that
out of the strife of the good old days there has come, by
reaction from the practices of the past, much that is most
desirable in the methods of the present.

The leaders who were directing the marshaling of the
harvesting-machine armies between 1884 and 1902 knew
very well that such competition as they saw going on
around them could not but prove disastrous to their
business. The idea of amalgamation was first broached
between Cyrus Hall McCormick and William Deering
before the former s death, but nothing came of purely ten
tative conversations. The temper of the first generation
of harvester men was too individualistic. The records of
1885 are full of accounts of meetings called to consider
consolidation and adjourned with nothing done. Mc
Cormick stood on one side for individual activities, Deer-
ing did not then participate in the discussions, and the
smaller companies were urging consolidation or, at least,
some understanding on prices. In 1888, there were other
meetings from which McCormick kept away. Late in
1890, the first consolidation, the American Harvester
Company, was born.

At that time all the harvester companies bought their

io8 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

knives and cutting sections from the Whitman, Barnes
Company, of Akron, Ohio. Its president, Colonel A. L.
Conger, conceived the idea of a grand consolidation of all
existing producers of harvesting machinery in which his
own little organization would be preserved. So, as he
went around to call on his customers, he propounded his
plan and finally persuaded each of them to set a price on
his property. Thus, in December, 1890, the many com
petitors found themselves all members, for the moment,
of the same family. Cyrus H. McCormick was president,
William Deering was chairman of the board of directors,
E. K. Butler, general manager of the McCormick Com
pany, held a similar position in the new organization, and
minor offices were apportioned among the other com
panies.

The scrambled executives met in the Champion build
ing in Chicago. It soon became a matter of interesting
inquiry how the new company was to find money to pay
the fantastic valuations on the old properties accepted
without appraisal by Conger. There was also immediate
and widespread public opposition to this trust 1 as being
an effort to flout the recently passed Sherman Law. It was
also whispered about in the office that the widow of the
late inventor of the reaper would not willingly see his
name submerged in the new company. Finally, there was
no operating plan nor, most disastrous of all, was there
any operating capital.

The American Harvester Company died in January,
1891, when Cyrus H. McCormick and William Deering
went to New York for advice. They found that the bank
ers whom they consulted were cold to the new company
and were unwilling to provide the necessary financing.
The two Chicago men were sharing a hotel parlor, where,
late at night, McCormick was pondering the situation. As

THE HARVESTER WAR 109

he sat alone, the door of Deering s room opened. Clad
only in his nightshirt, the old gentleman walked in and
stood before the fireplace, his hands locked behind his
back, and his fine face grave with concern.

McCormick/ he said at last, are these other fellows
trying to make the two of us carry water for them?

It looks that way to me !

1 All right, let s go home and call it off/

I agree/ said the younger man and both went to
bed and slept soundly for the first time in nights, secure
again in the unimpaired possession of their own sound
companies.

The next endeavor to effect a consolidation in the
harvesting-machine industry did not take place for sev
eral years. In the meantime competitive strife waxed,
and certain of the smaller companies, which had com
pleted the abortive roster of the American Harvester
Company, had gone the way of all weak contestants in a
struggle which tested the souls of the strongest. McCor-
mick and Deering were all the time standing out more
clearly as the leading antagonists; and in 1897 they very
nearly solved by themselves the problem of their rivalry.
It was then proposed that the McCormicks should buy
out the Deerings, who were willing to retire. A purchase
price for the entire business was agreed on, an option was
taken, and Cyrus H. McCormick and his brother Harold
started out to try to find the money. Perhaps they were
financially inexperienced, or perhaps their figures did not
sufficiently set forth the probable benefits of consolida
tion. At all events, they were unable to get the necessary
money together before their option on the Deering busi
ness expired.

An opportunity which must then have seemed priceless
thus vanished and the harvester war went on. It was dur-

I io THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

ing the period immediately following 1897 that the great
est Deering effort to overhaul McCormick was made.
Deering anticipated McCormick in making hay rakes,
binder twine, knives and other cutting apparatus, and
malleable castings, and in the construction of a rolling
mill. It was planning a Canadian factory, a blast fur
nace, and the acquisition of ore and timber reserves. A
successful radical anticipation of sales requirements had
been allowing it to fill orders after McCormick had sold
out its stocks of machines. All in all, the Deerings were
closing the gap that separated them from the leader in
the race

It was mutually apparent that on the competitive basis
then existing, Deering could not afford to go on expanding
nor could McCormick secure enough capital to build or
buy a steel mill of its own and provide production facili
ties to repel the Deering drive. Expansion in the foreign
field, where McCormick stood first, was expensive; and
Deering could not afford to try to catch up, nor could Mc
Cormick further extend itself. Business was still reason
ably profitable for the two leaders, but the added returns
from the much greater volume of the last two or three
years was nowhere near in proportion to the growth.
Even for them the harvester war was disastrous.

CHAPTER VII

"FORMATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL
HARVESTER COMPANY

IN JUNE, 1902, the president of the McCormick Har-
yesting Machine Company went to New York to seek
the aid of the House of Morgan. He had for some time
been viewing with apprehension the growing competitive
strength of Deering. It would matter comparatively little
to the trade if the weaker companies failed to live through
the bitter war of the last decade. If Wood or Johnson or
Acme went down, that would not lighten the burden of
those who bore the responsibilities of leadership. Deering
was the rival McCormick had to fear McCormick was
the leader whose place Deering was trying to occupy.

In the case of both these companies there was more to
fight for than the victory of the moment. One of them
had a history to defend, the long tradition of a leadership
that had lasted for sixty years. There was a reputation
to preserve that had been won in the bitter battles of in
dustrial evolution. The family business was a memorial
to its founder. It was in the hands of men who were living
out of and by Cyrus Hall McCormick s ideals. It was
supervised by the kindly figure of his widow whom the new
generation adored, whether they were young gladiators or
whether they were the scarred survivors of the army he
himself had trained. One and all loved her because they
saw in her the living manifestation of him who had planned
their destinies. In the case of the Deering Company
there was an honorable record of commercial success to
uphold and the triumphant memory of twenty years of
increasing challenge to the old leader. Those two decades

112 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

of harvester experience had taught it the rules of the
rough-and-tunible of competition, had bestowed upon it
the atmosphere of respect which weaker men hold for the
brains of giants, had proved that adroitness and clever
planning and skill were nearly a match for tradition and
the intangible power which always goes with leadership.

Three times McCormick and Deering had met around
a table, three times their peace conferences had failed,
three times they had gone out to renewed battle. Re
cently Deering had been exhibiting new tactics. Since the
frontal attack gave no promise of final success, new
strategy was being tried. The field of raw materials was
being explored, Deering built a rolling mill near his plant
where old railway rails and other steel could be reworked
into the special shapes and sizes demanded for harvester
manufacture. He had acquired a controlling interest in a
South Chicago blast furnace, iron ore deposits on the
Mesaba Range, and Kentucky coal lands, which gave
evidence of his intention to produce his own iron and
steel. He bought hardwood forests in Missouri and yellow
pine in Mississippi. If he could himself provide his own
iron, steel, and lumber, the basic raw materials of the
agricultural implement industry, he might be able to re
duce the material cost of his machines. He had long since
shown himself to be a most worthy manufacturing foe-
man and by this time his factory was more self-contained
than McCormick s.

The McCormick Company s greater genius lay in the
sales field. Its selling system, pioneered by the founder of
the business a half-century before, kept it supreme. But
now McCormick wanted to do as Deering had done, to ac
quire raw material resources and develop its factories ; and
it desired to expand further in foreign countries where
Deering was not as strongly represented. But capital was

INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER COMPANY 113

lacking. So, to get money for the sinews of the battles of
the future, Cyrus H. McCormick went to New York.

Quietly, unannounced, armed simply with a letter of
introduction, trained in the hardest warfare of commerce
but unskilled in the high science of finance, he ap
proached George W. Perkins, youngest of the partners of
J. P. Morgan and Company. He explained his errand,
and Perkins assured him that the necessary capital could
easily be secured. Then the financier began to ask ques
tions about the harvester business, its backgrounds, the
companies engaged in it, their strength, the ability of
their leaders, the value of their properties and products,
the chances for further development at home and abroad.
For hours the two men talked. Before McCormick left,
Perkins inquired if by any chance he cared to merge his
business in a larger company in which the McCormick
business would be the dominating element.

A week later they met again, and Perkins was given the
voluminous data prepared for the most recent effort at
consolidation. At the same time he announced that the
Morgan firm might find it interesting itself to enter the
harvester business, and asked how he might go about it
to buy the assets of the Milwaukee Harvester Company,
whose ruling dynasty had become extinct. That day,
when McCormick left, Perkins invited him to return in
July for an extended series of conferences. A third time
McCormick went back to New York. For three weeks,
through the blistering heat of a Manhattan summer, he
and his attorneys lived in their hotel and received fre
quent calls from Perkins. The banker went rapidly from
one to another of the groups of harvesting-machine men
whom he had invited to New York, pointing out the ad
vantages of consolidation and settling the basic princi
ples. My father has said that Perkins was the most

114 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

brilliant negotiator he ever met. He and the other
Chicagoans knew little of the fine details of finance,
nothing intimately of Perkins and yet in three weeks
the banker won the confidence of all of them, merged
their businesses, and accomplished the one thing they
knew would be their salvation, though they had tried
in vain for eleven years to effect it consolidation.

The harvester men met together for the first time
around a Morgan conference table in late July. Perkins
talked again of the benefits to them and to their custom
ers of a consolidated industry, of economies in manufactur
ing and in distribution, of foreign fields waiting to be de
veloped. He talked of his proposed financial structure and
the new conquests of new fields of endeavor that would
result. He talked so well and painted such a rosy picture
of the future that his listeners almost forgot their ancient
differences and were willing to try to be friends.

There can be no question but that self-preservation lay
uppermost in the minds of the company presidents who
sat around that table. The evils of the harvester war
were fresh in their troubled minds. But there were many
other cogent reasons why the International Harvester
Company should be formed. The competitive methods of
the Nineties were not only murderous, but wasteful in the
extreme and detrimental to retail agent and consumer as
well as to manufacturer. Farmers had bought enormous
quantities of harvesting machinery in 1902 from the five
organizations, more than they really needed. The pres
sure of salesmanship was such that the harvester com
panies were forcing more implements on the public than
it had any occasion to buy. A machine which might
have lasted for nearly ten years was declared obsolete in
less than five; and the farmer s bill for new equipment was
beyond all reason not because of the price per unit,

INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER COMPANY 115

which was ruinously low, but because of the many units
needlessly sold. The local dealers were crippled by their
own numbers. Competition had decreed that all over the
United States, in every town, at every crossroads, there
must be a McCormick or a Deering dealer. The three
other companies were less widely represented ; but they,
too, had flung as far as possible the array of their dis
tributors. More than forty thousand dealers across the
land were too many. None of them could grow, none
could become prosperous, none could do more than imi
tate in his own neighborhood the feud methods of the
big companies. They fought, too, and their fall was even
more rapid.

The big companies did not realize clearly that they
were producing and selling more machines than the trade
could absorb. They felt that if normal conditions could
be imposed upon them, they would be able not only to
make their business profitable, but might expand it as
well. They were certain that this could be done in the
foreign field if only they could get the necessary capital
for expansion. McCormick, and to a lesser extent Deer-
ing, were both already established abroad, and each was
in its own way striving to pour out its strength to win in
Europe and Siberia the victories each was fighting for
at home. But compared to America, foreign farms were
underequipped. Branch houses and local agents were
needed, also stocks of machines and repairs. Trained men
were required to carry the gospel of mechanized farming
to struggling peasants. Those were things which capital
and husbanded strength alone could supply. J. P. Mor
gan was then in Europe, in touch by cable with the state
of affairs. His keen mind saw the possibilities of develop
ments abroad, and it was he who gave the name Inter
national to the new company.

n6 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

The harvester men expected also to accomplish large
manufacturing and distributing economies out of the
consolidation which would benefit both stockholders and
customers. But after the new company was under way,
they found to their sorrow that the undue sales pressure
of the days of cut-throat competition had pushed the
volume beyond all reason. They had to face such a seri
ous reduction of the volume of production that any hope
of lower manufacturing or selling costs was vain. In 1903,
the International Harvester Company did less business
than the constituent companies had done the year before*

An immediate benefit resulting from the amalgamation
was the plan, not originally formulated, but soon to be
developed, of filling idle factories and curing the abuse
of part-time operations with various new lines of product.
When a factory made only such strictly seasonal goods as
grain binders, twine, mowers, rakes, corn binders, and a
few other collateral tools, its schedule of operation was
either up or down, depending upon the weather or the
fortune of competitive sales efforts. Whole armies of
workmen had to be dismissed for many months a year;
the capital invested in factory buildings and expensive
equipment stood idle too much of the time. It was the
same in the field. As soon as harvest was over, the best
salesmen were retained to help with collections, but the
others were turned loose. By the time winter set in, the
collectors also were dismissed, and the battalions waited
in unremunerative idleness until spring. Just how this
situation might be corrected was not immediately appar
ent in 1902. There was no expectation that the decline in
the volume of harvester business would provide factory
space for new lines which would contribute in later years
to a steady cycle of manufacturing. However, it was
obvious that the evil of part-time operation could not

INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER BINDERS IN ALGERIA AND
IN FRANCE

INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER COMPANY 117

be cured under the existing circumstances. The future
profits of the Harvester Company were to come, not from
any expansion of the old lines/ but from the business to
be built up in later years in other lines of agricultural im
plements and in lines of trade that were not even dreamed
of in the early part of the twentieth century.

A few days after the worried company presidents had
heard the last of George W. Perkins brilliant conversa
tion, on August 12, 1902, they agreed to merge in a new
type of corporate structure. To steer clear of the anti
trust clauses of the Sherman Law, Perkins lawyers
planned to buy, not the stock of the constituent com
panies themselves, but their physical assets only their
factories, their warehouses, their properties, and their in
ventories. For these the companies received $60,000,000.
Another $50,000,000 of the future capital came from their
bills and accounts receivable, which, after being guaran
teed by their owners, were used as cash in payment for
stock in the new company. Ten millions of stock was
issued to Morgan for cash. It is interesting to note that,
when the stipulated appraisement of properties was made
some months later, the assets for which $60,000,000 was
paid were found to have an actual value of over $67,000,-
ooo. There was not one dollar of watered stock in all
the $120,000,000 capital of the International Harvester
Company.

The estates of the owners of the Milwaukee Company
received cash for their assets and subscribed to none of
the new stock. The Champion representatives took cash
for their factories, but paid for their share of stock with
their receivables. The Piano people, the Deerings, and
the McCormicks asked for and received payment en
tirely in stock. They had confidence in the future.

The harvester presidents also agreed to tie up the en-

n8 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

tire capital for ten years in a voting trust composed of
Cyrus H. McCormick, the new president, Charles Deer-
ing, the new chairman of the board of directors, and
George W. Perkins. For ten years this voting trust was
to exercise all of the normal powers of stockholders. Its
nominal purpose was to carry the company through its
first years and to retain control in the hands of the old
harvester families. But Perkins had sensed that no Mc
Cormick and no Deering could long remain at peace with
each other; and out of that sure difference of opinion and
objective his brilliant and ever-active mind may have
planned some form of control for himself. Be that as it
may, the voting trust served to tide the new company
over a difficult trial period and to keep it out of the field
of speculation during its formative years.

It is not surprising that the formation of the Interna
tional Harvester Company did not immediately bring
peace within the battle-scarred ranks of the harvester
legions. While the July and August conferences were
continuing in New York, the harvester war was being
carried on as strenuously as ever on the territory. None
were in the secret of the consolidation except the chiefs.
None knew that the lions of to-day were expected to give
over their carnivorous habits and be the lambs of to
morrow. When word came that a peace treaty had been
signed, each side mourned as if in defeat. These men of
the fighting front had been trained too long in the rigor of
mortal combat to believe that the feud could be settled in
any other way than by the survival of the fittest.

The new organization had been put together in such a
brief space of time that there had obviously been oppor
tunity for agreement in principle only. Every detail had
to be left for subsequent adjudication. This put a heavy
burden on the executive committee of the directors whose

INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER COMPANY 119

duty it was to solve every unsettled problem. Perkins
had been the arbitrator during the days leading up to the
consolidation ; and now, when meetings were held either
in New York or Chicago, he tactfully suggested that the
interested parties to any intramural dispute endeavor to
reach a solution by themselves before taking the case
to the court of last resort. But the property appraisals
could not be made for months, and even when they
were complete, there was much natural but happily
unfounded suspicion of the worth of the figures supplied
for inventory and other valuations. The new partners
still had to learn to trust one another and mutual agree
ment was not easy.

For a year it was not practical even to put the Com
pany together physically. Probably it would have been
impossible to make an instant and yet fair and impersonal
choice between the offices, warehouses, personnel, and
business methods which now had to be scrambled.
Therefore, the component sales organizations were left in
tact, being simply renamed divisions of the new corpora
tion. The men of the McCormick, Deering, and other
battalions were told to cease firing and to cooperate with
their former foes ; and yet they could see no visible change
in their situations. Quite naturally each group sought to
consolidate whatever gains it had made and, to be on the
safe side, to secure any possible additional advantage
against the day of reckoning.

The harvest of 1902 was no more than half over when
the consolidation was announced. Many machines still
had to be sold, more had to be delivered to purchasers.
Field men, who had in the past been trodden upon by
more powerful competitors, believed their day had come
and assumed an authority they could not otherwise have
claimed. General agents, who had formerly had things

120 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

more or less their own way, resented what they considered
the intrusion of unworthy allies. Each division tried so to
conduct itself that when the total was rendered, its rela
tive standing would appear as large as possible. Competi
tion, somewhat hidden under the guise of corporate rela
tionship, went on, and, because stepbrothers are prone to
be jealous rather than friendly, veiled suspicion became
the order of the day.

The more or less separate divisions were maintained
until the end of 1903, by which time the executive manage
ment was able to get control of the situation. Even in
Chicago there had been difficulties, which, while they
have now happily been forgotten, caused much heart
burning. There was striving for place, there was the
natural inability of former rivals immediately to see good
instead of bad in one another, and above all there were
the scarcely healed scars of the McCormick-Deering duel.
Many a former partisan found himself serving under an
erstwhile opponent, and many were the sacrifices de
manded in the interest of harmony. One eager man went
to the president with a complaint about the incompetency
of his recently appointed superior. He was urged to
remember the need for team-play, to go to bat for his
organization and make safe hits.

But, sir, said the anguished partisan, what I m talk
ing about isn t a hit it s a foul!

As soon as the physical consolidation could be made
effective, things began to improve. For ten years the
affairs of the International Harvester Company remained
in the ultimate control of the three voting trustees ; and
the final solution of jealousy-bred, petty friction did not
come until the flowering of company spirit at the expira
tion of the voting trust. At the worst, though, the early
troubles were caused by misplaced faith in ancient ways

INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER COMPANY 121

or by an overzealous desire to keep the flag of the old
house flying. There is something worthy of praise even in
misdirected loyalty; and the woes of those brief days may
perhaps be charitably regarded as a tribute to the hardi
ness of the scarred veterans of the harvester war. It is to
be regretted that their courage was not rewarded by an
increasing volume of business. No one had any idea how
large a portion of the volume had been secured by over-
persuading the farmer to buy.

The average number of binders annually sold for the
five years prior to 1902 was 152,000, whereas for the first
ten years of the International Harvester Company it was
91,000. Where an average of 217,000 mowers had been
marketed, now no more than 170,000 were required.
Even in 1912, the United States business done in the old
lines was less than it had been at the time of the creation
of the organization that was intended to permit the har
vester business to devote its energies to expansion rather
than to continued mutual strife!

This decline of the old harvesting-machine lines con
tinued during the first ten International Harvester years
in spite of the fact that the acreage of farmed land and
the production of grain in the United States were increas
ing. But the Company s total business prospered at the
same time from the successive introduction of more and
more new-line machines, such as harrows, cultivators,
and cream separators, which one after the other were
added to the sales catalogue. Soon after 1902, also, the
sale of steel and fiber became an important part of the
volume. Most of all, though, the rapidly developing for
eign business bolstered Harvester s position.

After 1902, the new capital, new material resources,
new blood, and the new enthusiasm for foreign activity
promoted by the consolidation brought about a rapid

122 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

advance in oversea trade. Within four years the foreign
business doubled. The trade with Russia alone was ap
proximating the entire export trade of 1902, and South
America was buying as much agricultural equipment as
all of Europe had formerly ordered. After ten years the
Company was widely effective in Great Britain, all over
western and Central Europe, Russia, South America, the
Antipodes, and Africa. True to the old traditions, it had
penetrated into districts where progress was unknown,
and, in far countries where peasant farmers had never
dreamed of emancipation, it had developed new business
by teaching the better methods of mechanized agricul
ture. American workmen were busy manufacturing ar
ticles for the farms of prince and peasant alike. American
salesmen were following along the highway of distant
commerce pioneered in 1851 by Cyrus Hall McCormick
when he visited London with his * cross between a flying
machine, a wheelbarrow, and an Astley chariot. So well
had they taught the people of other countries the use
of American harvesting machinery that within ten years
the Company s foreign trade had increased fivefold.

The development in the new lines of agricultural equip
ment was almost as rapid as the growth of the export
trade. This began with the purchase in 1903 of D. M.
Osborne & Company, of Auburn, New York. Thus,
this famous old harvester and tillage business entered
International Harvester s ranks and the first step in the
direction of a rounded-out line of machinery was taken.
The Osborne firm enjoyed a considerable trade in the
eastern part of the United States and had already de
veloped a large foreign business ; and its twine mill, situ
ated near the seaboard, would, it was hoped, prove a valu
able asset in securing foreign twine trade. It was the larg
est and strongest among the independent concerns, and,

INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER COMPANY 123

since it did a minimum of business in the West, where the
McCormick versus Deering battle raged most fiercely, its
strength had been less impaired by the rigor of savage
competition. Its factory made disk, peg-tooth, and
spring-tooth harrows, small cultivators, and hay tools, as
well as the Osborne line of harvesting machinery. In the
same year the Minnie Harvester plant was acquired in
connection with an effort to make twine out of American
flax, which was a natural product of the district around
St. Paul.

In 1904, Harvester bought the little Keystone Com
pany, of Rock Falls, Illinois, and thus acquired an historic
line of tillage implements and hay tools to supply the
Western trade. The Weber Wagon Company, of Chicago,
was taken over and brought a popular wagon into the
International fold. The Kemp manure spreader was pur
chased ; and the Akron factories of the defunct Aultman-
Miller Company were acquired. In all of these cases ex
cept Osborne the controlling reason was to gain an easy
access to some line of new business. Osborne was of
natural interest because of its availability, as an Eastern
factory not far from Atlantic ports, in the drive to secure
foreign trade.

In each of these cases the International Harvester
Company acquired a going business, an equipped factory
already in operation, a manufacturing and sales staff, and
the goodwill of an established position in some portion at
least of the territory. Of equal importance were the new
avenues of activity it sought to develop for itself. To
gain manufacturing economies, the Milwaukee Harvester
line was moved to McCormick Works and the Piano
machines were given a home at Deering. An improved
version of the Kemp manure spreader and a companion
type of wagon to the Weber were installed in the Piano

124 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

home at West Pullman. Milwaukee was equipped to pro
duce cream separators and stationary gasoline engines.
The first of the Company s tractors were assembled in
1906 in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, where trucks and trans
missions were provided for the Milwaukee-made sta
tionary engines. The vacated Aultman-Miller shops at
Akron were devoted to the preliminary production of
a high-wheeled, air-cooled type of motor truck (known,
perhaps satirically, as an auto buggy ). This had been
designed to meet what was thought to be the farmer s
demand for a motor vehicle of his own type, which, in
recognition of what was deemed to be his preference,
must be made as nearly like his horse-drawn buggy in
appearance as possible.

Leaving until later a discussion of what this early ex
cursion into the field of farm power meant to agriculture,
it may be instructive to examine the broad significance of
this reaching out into the new lines whose development
was thus begun. The addition of cultivators and disk
harrows meant that for the first time a business hereto
fore dedicated to the harvesting of a crop was to provide
utensils whose business it was to explore beneath the sur
face of the ground. As plow-makers have learned to their
sorrow, soil resistance varies from community to com
munity and even within any given field. The problem of
designing moving machinery to withstand stresses and
strains that can be reasonably predicted in advance is dif
ficult enough. It involves careful calculation and the long
tests of experience to determine the relation of applied
power and desired result. A plow or a cultivator, which has
to do so much of its work in secret, is simpler by far in
that it contains fewer moving parts; but a greater knowl
edge of the strength of materials is required. The robust
ness of design needed to withstand unexpected shocks was

INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER COMPANY 125

a lesson impressed later upon farm-implement makers by
the necessity of dealing with the tractor s stream of tire
less power; but the problem of work under the surface
had its full share in teaching the International Harvester
Company how better to strengthen its materials in terms
of cultivating, plowing, listing, and the like.

Cream separators, stationary engines, and manure
spreaders were an even better expression of non-harvest
ing experience. They led the Company directly into
touch with activities in which the farmer engages for
many months before and after the gathering of his crops.
Manure spreaders taught a lesson of scientific farming
wherein an agriculturist, by means of the provision of
fertilizer, could draw more yield and therefore more profit
from the soil. Cream separators opened a way to dairy
worlds that were entirely set apart from wheat and which
brought a different psychology into play on farm prob
lems. The gasoline engine s object was to lighten labor,
just as the reaper s had been; but its purpose was general
and not specific. Available power would prove to be the
key to unlock another door that to the most modern
type of agriculture.

And yet the reaper, just as it first solved the problem of
farm labor, lay in the background behind these newer
implements. There may seem to be a very slight connec
tion between the reaper of 1831 and a modern manure
spreader, less even between it and an engine whose fuel
was undreamed of then, or a cream separator whose
centrifugal object it is to replace the pan and ladle. The
significant point is that it and they were both mechanisms
which not only replaced labor, but functioned more ef
ficiently. The reaper turned men s minds to the solution
of farm labor problems. It started a train of thought that
later was to bring into being so many mechanical answers
to the farmer s needs.

126 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

Of greater importance to agriculture than these new
machines was the element of stabilization brought to the
industry by the formation of the International Harvester
Company. Chaos had been reigning. The harvester war
had started between McCormick and Hussey and then
had raged between McCormick and Manny. For a time
the protagonists had been McCormick and Champion.
Most recently it had been a struggle, apparently to
the death, between McCormick and Deering. Always the
ancient leader had been forging on ahead, always there
had been some one to challenge its aggressiveness. The
net result of constant turmoil was disaster for the
manufacturer, for the local agent, for the farmer. The last
had frequently enjoyed the benefit of low prices if the
turn of battle should happen to take the form of price-
cutting competition; but that was all. The farmer could
not buy a machine from a manufacturer with any assur
ance that the vendor would be in existence next year.
The maker could not have the benefit of a great volume of
foreign sales to increase his production and thereby re
duce his costs and his selling price. Above all, the farmer
could not under the old system get the benefit of the large
sums the Harvester Company immediately began to
spend each year in organized experimental research.

American business men now believe that uncertainty is
the worst of all commercial evils. If business is to be
good, they can provide for it; if bad, they can prepare for
it; and if it is to be normal, they can surround the conduct
of their affairs with some assurance for the future. In the
case of the International Harvester Company, this assur
ance of stabilized conditions rather than chaos took the
form of a more intensified understanding of the purveying
of necessities of life. Binders and mowers and gasoline
engines and manure spreaders are not luxury articles*

INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER COMPANY 127

They are basic necessities. People do not buy necessities
because they want to, but because they have to. For a
luxury they will pay a long price and make no complaint;
but they will deliberate over the terms of a necessary
transaction and demand those things they feel they have
a right to expect.

The most vital desideratum in the eyes of purchasers is
service. What investigation of the field problems has the
manufacturer made to insure a potential customer that
the article in question will meet his needs? What service
can the seller render to facilitate selection? What assur
ance can the maker or the wholesaler or the retailer give
of instruction in the use of the new device or of adjust
ment in its after life? These are questions which any
vendor of a necessity must expect from any purchaser. It
cannot be written into the purchase contract that the
resulting functions will be performed. But customer
goodwill is the most productive of all investments.
People in general and farmers in particular were soon to
learn that they could expect more worth from the plans
and efforts of the new company than they had ever been
able to receive from its weaker component parts. Their
problems were its problems. Its success was theirs.

CHAPTER VIII
THE EARLY HARVESTER COMPANY YEARS

IT is probable that the deeper evils resulting from the
great harvester war were not appreciated at the time of
the formation of the International Harvester Company.
Of these, by no means the least was the decline of the
trade in the old-line harvesting machines which, as has
been shown, had been forced by undue competition to a
volume far larger than the normal farm demand could
sustain. As soon as the managers of the consolidation
realized this, they sought to secure relief by attacking
the problems of so-called vertical integration through
company production of raw materials and by expansion
through the development of new lines of product.

It has been related how the Deering Company bought
land on the Calumet River in South Chicago and planned
to erect blast furnaces. It fell to the International Har
vester Company to develop this property. It had been
proposed to produce some sixty-five thousand tons of
steel a year; but now the demands for Company-made
steel were greater and additional equipment was provided
nearly to double the estimated production. The making
of steel is a grimy business, full of the din of continuing
utility and the nerve-tension of never-ending demand.
It is also romantic with accomplishment. To get an
adequate volume for production, much more steel had
to be made than the Company itself required; and the
disposal of this surplus has become a useful contribution
to Harvester s widening field of sales.

The development of the Deering ore leases on the
Mesaba Range and of the coal lands in Kentucky fol-

EARLY HARVESTER COMPANY YEARS 129

lowed after the organization of the new company. The
exploitation of the ore mines was a picturesque tale of in
dustrial conquest. The coal fields were sixty miles away
from a railway. But the solution of apparently difficult
problems was not too much for the heirs of men who had
moved Deering Works overnight or who had rebuilt
McCormick Works so splendidly after the Chicago Fire.
The railroad was persuaded to bring in its tracks, bee
hive coke ovens were constructed, coal veins were opened,
and a new town in the Kentucky hills was built. This
little city, planned in terms of the new science of welfare,
was one of Harvester s first efforts at providing twentieth-
century surroundings for workmen.

At Hamilton, Ontario, a new plant was begun in 1903
on land which the provident Deerings had purchased.
The Canadian duty on agricultural implements had
never been heavy; but they had wished to gain such
small advantage as they could. In those days the bene
fits of quantity production were not understood ; so it is
not surprising that they expected, by having a Cana
dian factory, to save the entire duty. The International
Harvester Company determined to manufacture there
its Canadian requirements of binders, mowers, and such
other machines as were built especially for the Canadian
market.

The effort to develop a flax twine industry in the
Minnie Harvester plant at St. Paul was unsuccessful.
Although the technical processes were perfected, the
science and skill of the United States Government, the
State agricultural authorities, and the International
Harvester Company could not make a twine which, when
bound neatly around a sheaf of grain, would repel the
appetite of grasshoppers. The soft flax became their
favorite diet; so the Company perforce wrote off more

130 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

than a million dollar loss and had to admit that the
experiment was a failure. Flax, for which so much had
been expected, could not be used as a commercially satis
factory binder-twine material. Twine production was,
therefore, confined to hard fiber bought in Yucatan and
the Philippines, which was spun in the twine mills at
McCormick, Deering, Auburn, and St. Paul.

However disastrous may have been the Harvester
Company s effort to provide binder twine made of
American-grown flax, its other efforts to help the farmer
by producing new lines of usable tools were more suc
cessful. The greater part of the money spent on the
manufacturing establishment went toward the equipping
of the new-line factories. The modernization of the old
harvesting-machine plants simply had to wait. Cream
separator and stationary engine manufacture was in
stalled at Milwaukee in place of the former line of har
vesting machinery which had been removed to McCor
mick Works. A great new gray iron foundry was built,
the largest in the Company and one of the largest in the
world. But the new era of the factory did not really start
until 1908, when tractor production began, although
Milwaukee was making the power plants for the Com
pany s Upper Sandusky-made tractors as early as 1906.
The Auburn, Akron, Springfield, West Pullman, and
Rock Falls shops were enlarged.

The distribution of product between these many plants
was entirely scientific and logical. The manufacture of
any given machine was centralized in one factory, except
as concerned Auburn and Rock Falls Works, where a
freight differential on business designed for the East and
South or for the West governed the allocation of product.
The resulting manufacturing economies were, however,
nowhere near important enough to affect sales prices.

EARLY HARVESTER COMPANY YEARS 131

Then, too, wages and the cost of purchased materials
kept on increasing and counteracted the first efforts at
efficiency; and the demand for the old-line harvesting
machines failed to return to the former level. Neverthe
less, the Company s manufacturing program, was aided
by the new business secured abroad and in the new-line
products. They were providing the economic justifica
tion for the consolidation and the resulting exploration
into new fields of endeavor. Thus, by 1912 the Company
was spending twice as much for production labor as in
1902. No one of the factories was less active than ten
years before, no line of manufacture had been abandoned,
and many new articles had been introduced for the first
time.

McCormick and Deering Works went on very much as
before. They each had famous records as producing
centers for harvesting machinery, and it is perhaps the
fault of this fame, which they themselves had justified,
that their new entities demanded so little of the large
sums the Company was spending for new and revised pro
duction equipment. Their former manufacturing leader
ship had been outstanding. The seeds of mass produc
tion had been sown in the first McCormick Works
before 1850; and the Deering Company had, by 1902,
taken important early steps toward the integration of
raw materials and demand. Their great foundries and
their novel molding machinery were the admiration of
the iron world. Their records for low-cost production
were remarkable. They were the wonder of nineteenth-
century manufacturing. Their novel fragments of mod
ern mass-production methods, their mower-frame boring
machines and section-hardening furnaces were still
abreast of the times. The salesmen of those days were
even able to make and prove the surprising assertion that

132 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

the price of a grain binder with its hundreds of moving
parts was less per pound than that of an ordinary
domestic cook stove.

McCormick and Deering Works had gone far in a
world that had not quite discovered mass production.
And yet the Harvester Company, in spite of all its grow
ing resources, was unable to expand its trade facilities all
over the world, provide enough capital to equip so many
new production enterprises, and at the same time keep
abreast in all particulars with the pace of twentieth-
century progress. The old factories lost none of their
former excellence nor their ability to produce agricul
tural implements at a cost which was and is the
envy of the manufacturing world. But it must be ad
mitted that they did not readily accept the new theories
of mass-production methods which between 1910 and
1915 were being tried out in the newest automobile
factories. Thus, even Tractor Works, built after 1910
and devoted though it was to the construction of the
Company s most modern machine, the tractor, bore only
a slight resemblance to what would now be considered
a mass-production shop. Harvester s ability to produce
had not weakened, but it was not developing as fast as
were the manufacturing systems of other industries.
Where the motor-car world was beginning to progress
with new ideas and new methods, International s
harvesting-machine and new-line factories had for the
present to forgo modernization. Circumstances had com
pelled the Harvester Company to devote its capital and
energies to selling the new lines, to raw material proper
ties, and to the fostering of the export business.

At the time the Harvester Company was being formed,
the rising protective tariffs of foreign countries threat
ened exclusion from foreign markets already developed

EARLY HARVESTER COMPANY YEARS 133

at great expense and by years of effort. It was therefore
determined to embark upon a broad course of foreign
manufacture. The first of the European plants estab
lished was the Swedish Works at Norrkoping in 1905.
The initial production consisted largely of mowers, with
other implements and twine following as a matter of
course, as the high Swedish duties made it desirable to
produce that country s requirements within its borders.
In 1909, a site for a German factory was chosen at Neuss,
due consideration being given to the superfine manu
facturing facilities of the Rhineland and to the remark
able German distributing system of canals and railways.
Old factories were purchased at Croix, near Lille, in
northeastern France, and at Lubertzy, near Moscow, in
the heart of Russia. The last was designed to produce
the lobogreika, a Russian form of reaper suited to the
unsophisticated state of agriculture in that mysterious
country. The French and German factories were pre
pared to produce a general line of harvesting and tillage
tools and binder twine.

The first decade of Harvester Company experience was
devoted to an active and progressive interest in the devel
opment of human relations. In the earlier years of the
twentieth century, a very few industrial organizations
sought to discover those elements in industrial relations
which made for better work and more contented workers.
The United States Steel Corporation, for example, easily
assumed an outstanding leadership in the cause of safety.
In later years the International Harvester Company was
to command the field of forward-looking companies that
concern themselves with the investigation and solution of
personnel problems. In its youth it was equally a leader
in the field of welfare.

Let me emphasize that the difference between in-

134 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

dustrial welfare policies of, say, 1910, and the under
standing of industrial relations policies that exists to-day,
is profound. It may possibly be compared to the differ
ence between a feudalistic state the government of
which, however enlightened, contains nothing of the
consent of the governed and a democracy. It is not
suggested that an industrial democracy needs to, or does,
resemble a political democracy; but it is certainly true,
that if people have a voice in the making of the regu
lations which affect them, they are more able to under
stand and accept law. The world attained democracy
only after passing through a stage of feudalism. Simi
larly, the world of business attained the modern system
of industrial relations, which is so largely based upon
democratic principles of conduct, after an experimental
period of welfare.

I say this because I am proud of the fact that the Inter
national Harvester Company was one of the first large
industrial companies to lead the way to welfare and thus
take a radical step in the direction of industrial relations.
It seems to me that the lot of the great body of the work
men in the older harvester factories cannot formerly have
been the happiest. I once heard my grandmother and
my mother talk longingly of the hoped-for flower beds
and grass which now adorn the front yard at McCormick
Works; and I have seen some of the pre-International
sanitary installations which later knowledge has replaced
with more adequate facilities. If the McCormick and
Deering workmen were once provided with -washrooms
which would seem lamentably insufficient to modern
eyes, they enjoyed far better working conditions than the
men in the out-of-Chicago factories which came into the
International Harvester Company, or those in other fac
tories in the city. To arrive, it is necessary to start

EARLY HARVESTER COMPANY YEARS 135

It must be remembered that before 1900 there was a
great deal of strife between the supposedly hostile camps
of capital and labor. Chicago had several times seen
men shot down because of open revolt. A huge force
of Pinkerton detectives was organized to protect factory
property from riots growing out of strikes. After the
Haymarket riots the political efforts of the Working-
men s Party were crushed for a while, but in 1894 they
revived, and President Cleveland had to call out troops
to quell a bloody railway strike and prevent interfer
ence with the United States mails. Before 1902, wages
throughout the Nation were low, although the effect of
the early customs tariffs was being felt and they were
rising. Both capital and labor had to learn first how to
discover and then how to enjoy prosperity.

In 1912, when the Company was already a recognized
leader in welfare work, the following advanced statement
of policy was issued :

There was a period in the industrial development of this
country when employers gave little or no attention to the
physical or moral welfare of their employees. About the only
thought that an employer had for his men was on the day the
pay envelope had to be filled; and the employee s interest in his
employer was aroused from its sub-normal condition to one of
active concern when the paymaster hove in sight. Rapid
strides away from this condition have been made in the past
few years Many employers have come to realize that they
owe more than the wages, and that their employees are entitled
to clean, light, sanitary, and safe places in which to work, to
compensation when disabled, and to provision for old age. A
careful business man sees that his property is maintained in
excellent condition Welfare work, so-called, is simply ap
plying the same business principles to his employees that he
applies to the rest of his business. Good welfare work, like good
business, pays.

While this ideal is not entirely modern, in that it ex-

I 3 6 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

presses what we would to-day consider a step in the right
direction rather than the attainment of a sought-for ideal,
it was far ahead of its time in 1912. The industrial world
has, for example, heard much of the benefit of group and
other insurance. In 1908, the International Harvester
Company established an Employees 7 Benefit Association.
This is a mutual society maintained by the Company s
contribution of administration expenses, the employees
contributions going entirely to benefits. The Association
relieves the minds of its members from financial worries
when they cannot work because of sickness or of off-duty
accident, and its provision for the widows and children
of deceased Harvester men has been helpful. Inciden
tally the periodical factory elections for Association
trustees provided, eleven years later, an excellent school
of preparation for the exercise of the employee repre
sentation franchise.

Financial relief for accidents in the course of duty was
provided for by a compensation plan adopted in 1910.
The International Harvester Company was beginning
to adopt a policy of voluntary liberalism and its plan
assumed as a charge against itself the cost of all indus
trial accidents from whatever cause. A number of State
compensation laws, subsequently passed, followed its
terms. As fast as such legislation became effective, the
Company substituted the State systems for its own pre
vious scheme of voluntary compensation.

Matters affecting an employee s working conditions
were vigorously studied. Guards were provided for
moving machinery, books of rules for the avoidance of
accidents were printed, and foremen gave instruction in
safety. Until 1919 there were no works councils, so it was
impossible before then to tap the greatest of all reservoirs
of safety education, namely, the elected representatives

EARLY HARVESTER COMPANY YEARS 137

of the men themselves. Nevertheless, the Harvester
record for safety was impressive, and the Company was
already well on its way to its present acknowledged
leadership.

Some reference has been made to pre-i9O2 working
conditions and their too-frequent insufficiency. Viewed
with our educated perspective, they may not have been
good ; but that was so simply because manufacturers had
not yet learned what influence environment could have
on efficiency. Sanitation became the order of the day
for Harvester before any other company began to study
the subject. Old equipment was replaced, the drinking-
fountain appeared, ventilating systems were installed,
and the scientific application of electric lighting was
studied. Even in its first years, the Company began to
codify standards governing such matters. Exhaust sys
tems were provided for grinding rooms and over emery
wheels, first aid was practiced, factory hospitals were
organized, and a matron was engaged wherever any num
ber of women were working.

I do not pretend that what was accomplished before
1912 in the development of welfare, even the splendid
forward step of prohibiting night work for women, was
more than a good beginning. The manufacturing execu
tives of the Company had been trained in a different,
ruder school. Doubtless many of them did not appreci
ate, as did the higher management, the need for improve
ment in the application of welfare work; and their educa
tion may have seemed a slow matter. But a new genera
tion of men was taking charge of the factories. The
change in executive personnel due to promotion or resig
nation was rapid, and a younger generation was growing
up to take the place of the stern veterans of the harvester
war, who, simply because they themselves had survived,

138 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

had every right to believe that the fittest men alone
should be permitted to live on. The new men were ad
vancing by great strides and were putting their company
far in the lead among industrial concerns. They dis
cussed such matters under the head of health, whereas
we of to-day now consider them, and health as well, as
the essential foundation of efficiency. But they accom
plished much with practically nothing to begin with, and,
under the leadership of Cyrus H. McCormick, they laid
the sure foundation for the more developed science of the
present years. When a future historian looks back on our
generation s work, he will consider it good if we have
made as much of an advance beyond previous standards
as they did.

The most important of the early forward-looking poli
cies adopted by the International Harvester Company
was the establishment, in 1908, of a pension system. The
plan was not the first in the industrial world ; but its pro
visions were remarkable for their liberality. It was not
announced to a group of young workingmen who would
have to wait for a long period to enjoy its benefits, but
was made immediately applicable to all employees. A
fund was set aside from operating capital to insure an
income for the constantly increasing amount of pension
payments. The entire cost of pensions was and is
borne by the Company, no contribution being made by
the employee.

Many business organizations, stable enough to warrant
an expectancy of continued existence, have since adopted
pension schemes, but none has exceeded the provision
for the future offered by this plan and its subsequent
enlargements. Modern students say rightly that con
tinuity of employment bulks largest in a workman s eyes
when he considers working conditions. The second most

EARLY HARVESTER COMPANY YEARS 139

important consideration is provision for his declining,
unproductive years. Eager young men whose lives lie in
the future may not concern themselves deeply over their
last years; but stable workmen, whose best period may
have been given to one task, cannot but worry as to
what may happen to them when their strength declines.
Many Harvester men had been on the pay roll for forty
years or more. They had seen agricultural implements
develop from crude origins into efficient machines. Too
frequently they had seen their companies drifting toward
a financial incompetency that meant the ending of all
hope for themselves. Now they had been taken over into
a strong family, able to look forward to the future.
Furthermore, this new group looked at their affairs as
human problems. The day had gone when an employee
was merely a machine with legs and arms. He had
aspirations which should and could be recognized. The
Harvester Company flatly propounded the doctrine that
provision for these wants was a charge, not upon the
isolated individual, but upon the entire business.

Such a radical departure from what would once have
been considered the accepted conservatism of capitalism
was entirely consistent with the enlightened McCormicfc
tradition. If one examines carefully the life of the in
ventor of the reaper, one may easily discover more of a
tolerance toward the problems of humanity than one
might expect from a dominant, assertive, ruthless busi
ness man. In the case of his son, leader now of wider
destinies, the father s dominant will was muted to self-
control; and devotion to the cause of the reaper had
become a willingness an eagerness to recognize the
rights of others.

It has been said that the world has ever been able to
discover the right leader when an emergency appears.

140 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

Cyrus Hall McCormick was such a man for the develop
ment of the reaper, a pioneer in a time when pioneering
was needed, who could thrust a way through the barriers
obstructing the road to the future. Cyrus H. McCormick,
his son, was temperamentally able to lead the Interna
tional Harvester Company through its first, difficult
years and turn suspicion into faith. It would have been
too much to expect all Deering men, all McCormick
men, and all the men of the other organizations, factory
men and salesmen alike, to accept one another whole
heartedly simply because their former families had been
scrambled. But if it was difficult for some of these old
warriors to yield to the fact of consolidation, it was, con
versely, impossible for the president of the new family
to accept anything less than ultimate harmony and co
ordination as the standard of his organization.

In all his efforts he was ably seconded by his brother
Harold and by Alexander Legge, who became general
manager when C. S. Funk, of Champion, resigned in 1913
to become president of the Rumely Company. He had
won his way upward through every rank, and, since he
was one of those men to whom problems and difficulties
are the meat and drink of existence, the things he learned
in each stage of his progress became capital in the bank
of his advancement. Possessed of a fiery, forceful tem
perament, he could inspire men by his vigorous vision,
compel them to success by the power of his own example,
work himself with a never-ending consecration, and make
other men want to work. He and his president gave the
new company exactly the touch needed to prove to the
world that the thrill of perseverance and vision and
the ultimate success of well-laid plans were not the dead
attributes of the age of romance. They proved that high
ideals could be a measure of practical existence.

EARLY HARVESTER COMPANY YEARS 141

In 1912, Cyrus H. McCormick wrote of the Com
pany s first ten years:

The International Harvester Company has attempted to
show that a large corporation can be directed and inspired by
the same high ideals which so often characterize the manage
ment of a private business. It has not tried to shield its actions
behind any impersonal forms, but has accepted the full respon
sibility for its acts, and has asked to be judged by what it does.
Its officers and leading employees have spent their lives in
building up a sound and creditable business organization, and
their purpose and effort have been to bring to this Company
the same personal zeal for honorable success which gave to
the predecessor companies the high esteem of the commercial
world.

However popular the old companies had been with the
farming public, there can be no question that by 1912
the new consolidation was even higher in favor with the
agricultural world. Farmers had come to look to it for
service in their interests; and they had come to realize
that Harvester men were actuated by something more
than a mere desire to make and sell implements. Har
vester men had received from Harvester history a deep
inspiration which knit them in the common cause of
service. They became imbued with a spirit, a force that
permitted and compelled them to carry on.

It is difficult to define an abstract quality; and in the
case of Harvester Spirit, it would be simpler to relate the
annals of Harvester men and thus set forth a living
picture of its workings. In truth, it has so taken posses
sion of their consciousness that their every occupation
is an expression of its qualities. Individually, it is a very
personal force leading men on to accomplishment. Col
lectively, it is a bond that knits them into a strong union
for a common purpose. Its result has been that sincere
and constructive urge to serve which made it impossible

142 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

for Harvester men, great or small, to treat employees or
customers unfairly. It has woven the many thousands of
them into one family, so to speak a personal associa
tion dedicated to an ideal. This ideal has been the
effective personalization of the cause of service to the
farmer.

It is said that in Rockbridge County, Virginia, even
before 1831, Robert McCormick and his family, obvi
ously among the chief citizens in that rural community,
lived somewhat apart from their neighbors. The other
fanners and villagers may have felt that Robert and his
wife and his eldest son wre inspired by a different, wider
intellectual vigor. When the young inventor grew beyond
his father s stature, he made the whole body of farmers
members of his mental family ; and he considered his and
their common purpose more worth while than the activi
ties of other men. No matter how, in later life, he may
have come to be respected as an industrialist, as a leading
citizen, as a man of wealth, or as a churchman, he him
self felt that his distinction rested on his self-dedication
to the cause of agriculture. This was what he had sought
in the highways and byways of life he wanted the
esteem of the farmers to be his chief memorial.

The tradition he established lived after him and flour
ished. How many times I have heard Alex Legge, first
among Harvester men of that day and this, tell of how
my grandmother summoned a visiting general agent to
her house to tell her of the state of business on the far
frontiers, and how that man would later return to the
office fired with her zeal. How often I have seen Har
vester men pay tribute to my father s principles by
adopting them as their own. He had piloted his company
through a soul-testing period when every ounce of his
wisdom and his strength of purpose were needed, and out

EARLY HARVESTER COMPANY YEARS 143

of which the organization came with the mature vigor of
tried and true devotion. As president of the Interna
tional Harvester Company, his courage, fairness, and
determination were a shining example to men who might
otherwise have sought to continue within the consolida
tion the warfare of the past. He and his brother Harold
could set such an example because they, too, had dedi
cated their lives to the advancement of agriculture. They
were living in terms of a practical ideal which could not
be achieved except by the upright activities of the thou
sands whom they were teaching, as their father had
taught them, to serve the farmer.

With the exception of a few, the old leaders who
had formed the International Harvester Company had
dropped out of active operations by the time the first ten
years were run. Executive positions were being filled by
the younger McCormick managers, by the junior Deering
men to whom the struggles of the past had not been so
acute, by a scattering of promoted Champion and Key
stone executives, and by a constantly increasing number
of individuals who had had no previous connection with
Harvester affairs. One and all, these men were won by
the living force of the old tradition. Its vigor enveloped
them and in their hands became Harvester Spirit. They
solidified the Harvester family, they kept Harvester
Spirit intact through the years of trial, they handed it
on to the younger generation.

They could not have done so if this spirit had not been
to a certain extent self-propagating. An ideal of service
is ever strong. This one was sure enough to weld the men
of many organizations into one group, to pass from them
into new groups of younger Harvester men and cause
them also to be coherent in an even finer way. Harvester
Spirit has grown as much out of the dedicated minds of

144 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

the thousands of Harvester men all over the world as
from the ideals of their chiefs. They and the things they
do are its best expression. When a branch manager will
arise at midnight from his yearned-for bed to open the
warehouse and get a farmer a harvester knotter spring
which costs five cents and upon which that farmer s
entire harvest depends, he is actuated by something more
than a desire to hold his job. A factory laborer who lends
his shoulder to another s task is spending himself for
agriculture. The local dealers and the legion of farmers
who have learned to trust a corporation for service
they are echoing the subtle influence of Harvester Spirit.
In far-away New Zealand I have seen the same fighting
determination energizing a group of men no one of whom
has ever visited the parent source of inspiration in Chicago.
There is nothing secret, nothing occult, in Harvester
Spirit. Justice, fairness, truth, the right at all times at
whatever cost these were the ideals by which a grow
ing commercial organism was actuated. The men of the
new Harvester generation felt these things because they
lived by them. At the top of the organization, proudly
planning for its further expansion, were leaders like
Couchman, H. F. Perkins, Utley, and Ranney of the
McCormick staff; McKinstry and Haney of Deering;
Edgar of Champion; and Johnston of Keystone. Many
new men like Reay, the comptroller, and a hundred others
brought in to strengthen the ranks of enlarging depart
ments, became imbued with the modern force of ancient
ideals. I have heard Alex Legge attribute Harvester
Spirit to my father s influence; but I think his praise is
too broad. The credit for making it effective, and for the
presence in a commercial organization of practical ideals
which are usually supposed to be the crown of private
life alone, belongs to all Harvester men.

CHAPTER IX
THE TRANSITION TO MODERN MACHINERY

Ax THE formation of the International Harvester Com
pany, the constituent organizations made nothing more
than harvesting machinery. All five of them made grain
binders, the leading implement of the agricultural world,
reapers, corn binders, mowers, and hay rakes. McCor-
mick, Deering, and Piano also manufactured the push
type of harvester, the large machine used in the West,
and its companion, the header, a favorite implement in
the dry-farming districts which deposited the loose heads
in an accompanying wagon to be hauled away to await
the threshing process. The two larger companies also
manufactured the corn husker and shredder; Champion
made a very few hay tedders; and Osborne, at the time
it became a part of the new company, was the leading
producer of this tool.

These machines, with knife grinders, constitute what
are called the l old lines/ Immediately after the amalga
mation, Harvester, as has been said, turned its atten
tion to an intensive development of new lines/ These
included various machines which were acquired because
they already enjoyed an established reputation, such as
the Osborne series of tillage implements, the Keystone hay
tool and corn sheller line, the Weber wagon and the Kemp
manure spreader. They also comprised the develop
ments pioneered by Harvester s own experimental effort,
such as corn pickers, cream separators, stationary en
gines, tractors, and the embryo motor truck. For a time,
also, even pleasure motor cars were assembled, but this
precarious venture was of short duration. By 1912, hay

146 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

presses, seeding machinery, corn planters, and ensilage
cutters had also been put on the market. The first
harvester-thresher appeared in 1914, and the stationary
thresher in 1918.

Trade in the new lines has through the years assumed
a constantly increasing importance to the Company s
economic position. In 1903, it amounted to but a twen
tieth part of the entire business. In 1916, the new-line
volume for the first time exceeded the old; and as the
war-born demand for tractors came to be felt, it jumped
far in the lead. It may not be out of place to say that at
present the old lines constitute less than ten per cent of
the sales volume. The supremacy of the old harvesting
lines has passed.

The full line which the International Harvester
Company was developing could not be completed until
after 1918 when plows were added to its number of
machines; but even before then the catalogue included
an enormous variety of implements. By that year the
line of seven or eight original harvesting tools had so
broadened as to include almost every type of horse-
drawn machine a fanner need for crop production ex
cept plows. After the sod or stubble had been broken,
the cycle of the Company s interest in the farmer s work
aday activities began. There were harrows of every type
to smooth the turned furrows, grain drills for seeding, and
planters for corn or cotton. There were cultivators and
a variety of other tools for tending the growing crops, and
a multitude of harvesting implements for reaping grain or
corn in every way desired by any special locality. There
were threshing machines and the early models of the
harvester-thresher, that most efficient of all modern farm
implements which cuts grain and threshes it in a single
operation. There were mowers, many kinds of rakes,

TRANSITION TO MODERN MACHINERY 147

tedders, and loaders in sufficient variety to suit the many
climatic and other conditions under which hay is grown;
corn pickers, shellers, huskers, and ensilage cutters;
wagons and motor trucks for hauling; cream separators
for the dairyman and stationary engines for the small farm
or the municipal power plant; and there were tractors.

Most of these many machines were designed originally,
or were sooner or later redesigned from their former types,
by the Company itself. Research and experimental work
were organized immediately after the amalgamation.
Under the old companies, the owner of the competing
business himself had charge of this work. Once his busi
ness began to grow, the inventor of the reaper had to
give over the duty of designing to others, but he never
lost interest in progress and development. The annals
of McCormick, of Deering, and of the other warriors of
the old days are full of stories of the search for new de
vices, of days and nights spent in the fields testing an idea
against the sternest demands of actual use, and of the
glamor of final success retrieved from the very portal
of failure. After 1902, the heads of the business had to
concern themselves with problems of administration and
weighty matters of policy; so from the mechanical staffs
of the former companies they gathered a group of in
ventors and other men whose genius was born out of
experience in the study and solution of the farmer s
mechanical problems.

Modern experimental work is not as spectacular as it
was in 1831, because it so frequently must concern itself
with the more detailed problems brought into being by
specialization and because, too often, it is anonymous.
In the old days, when the world of machinery was new,
great ideas seemed to spring full-blown from the brain
of a genius. We, who perhaps fear that we must travel

148 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

over trodden paths, fail to realize how insufficient, judged
by our sophisticated standards, was the work of men like
Fulton or McCormick or Morse. Surely, though, there
is much credit for the man of to-day who attacks a prob
lem because he is told to do so, who works at his draw
ing board because it is his duty and not simply because of
a divine urge within him to create, who tries and who
succeeds.

Practically never does his first plan work. He must
throw away what he has done, keep the lesson of his first
failure, try again. Always he has to keep in his mind the
commercial requirements of his task. There is a cream
separator to design, for example. Such a device is nothing
new; it has long since been stripped of its mystery and
reduced to formulas of rotation, gravity, and the strength
of materials; and it is admitted that there is something
wrong with every previous effort of other men whose
experience may have seemed to canonize their work.
Then, too, whatever he does must stand the cold analysis
of sales judgment and accountancy, which will say that
such and such are the requirements of a dairy farmer,
and that if the price of the machine exceeds a certain
figure, the prospective customer will refuse to buy.
Finally, there are so many men to please. But ever there
is a chance to shorten the hours of farm labor, increase
production, or reduce the cost of farm products.

New design is not the only problem. I have heard it
said that science marches ahead so quickly into unex
plored fields of intellectual endeavor, or finds so many
flaws in deductions gained from previous knowledge, that
the scientist of 1900 would be but a beginner if he had
not kept on growing between that time and this. Simi
larly, even the tried and true grain binders of 1902 have
since been worked over and changed to keep them up to

TRANSITION TO MODERN MACHINERY 149

date and efficient in relation to the constantly enlarging
requirements of agriculture. An archaic type of machine
was deemed good in its day because men knew no better
when it was first offered to them; but out of it has grown
experience. Experience involves standards for former
methods as much as the critical ability to value new pro
cesses. The International Harvester Company bought
well-established and honorable trade names for tillage
tools, hay tools, wagons, and spreaders. Nevertheless, it
soon found the necessity of changing and improving those
machines if they were to be kept worthy of the new
cream separators, engines, tractors, and motor trucks
which were constantly appearing.

When the standards governing implement specifica
tions are in process of formation, new types of machinery
are carried south to the earliest harvest district and
started north in the train of the ripening grain. This is
arduous, but it gives several years experience in one
slimmer; and it is infinitely preferable to the primitive
method of McCormick in Virginia, where, if he failed to
correct a given difficulty, he could have no further chance
of doing so until next year. Gradually, the relation of
moving parts and the equations governing such things
as the strength of materials were reduced to a science.
This science lies only in men s minds, for no volume can
hold the text of experience, and agricultural implement
engineering has to deal with too many variables for ready
classification. One designs a binder or a mower in the
field or by night over the forge of a country blacksmith
shop, not from the published data of mathematical for
mulas. The designing of farm machinery demands an
intimate knowledge of farm psychology as well as farm
economics.

When the tractor was growing up, the empirical

150 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

method of implement engineering could to a certain ex
tent be supplemented by the documented evidence which
grew out of automobile designing. A tractor is made of
materials so expensive that their every qualification
must be known. The manufacturing limits can and
must be expressed to a nicety. The results to be expected
from horse-power and gear ratios can be predicted in
advance and subsequently checked with absolute assur
ance. But a tractor, which is purposeless if it is not able
to work at all times under maximum stresses and strains,
is not an easy problem. An automobile does not have
to run at top speed for every minute of its productive
life, an airplane engine is always in the hands of the most
skilled mechanics to check or repair any incipient ill.
The tractor has to work it has to be designed for never-
ending toil, for the task of furnishing available, immedi
ate, and dependable farm power.

The work of reconditioning the old lines and providing
a complete assortment of new-line equipment would have
been difficult enough for any group of engineers. Under
the Harvester Company plan of distribution, with at
least one McCormick and one Deering dealer in every
town, the engineers were asked to provide two designs
of each machine. As the so-called full line developed, it
became necessary to supply each of these sales agents
with a complete assortment of implements to accom
pany the line-leading binder in order to round out the
field of his trade possibilities. Each of these secondary
tools had to be different from, and yet had to perform as
satisfactorily as, its brother. Thus gradually through
the years there came into being an enormous variety of
machinery which taxed the engineers to plan and the
factories to manufacture. There were, for example, two
complete sets of tillage implements, at least two manure

TRANSITION TO MODERN MACHINERY 151

spreaders, two wagons, two cream separators, two types
of stationary engines, and for a time at least there were
two tractor lines.

I am not sure that this was entirely a sound plan. In
the early years of the Company, it was apparently the
intention to provide a multiple series of machines to
accompany the six harvester lines; and an attempt was
even made to provide a special binder for the Keystone
tillage line. Thus, a few header-harvesters were made
after 1906 for Champion, and side-delivery rakes and
tedders were added to the McCormick and Deering lines.
The endeavor was futile and fell of its own weight. One
sales organization could not stretch its attention to so
many almost identical machines of the same class. Then,
too, after 1912, the McCormick and Deering lines be
came, by popular selection, the leading Harvester Com
pany products. When I was on the sales force in 1915 and
1916, we found some trouble in disposing of the lesser
lines although in certain localities a dealer would
accept no other.

It required some planning to deal satisfactorily with
the double sales arrangements imposed upon us by the
double McCormick and Deering lines. We had to be
prepared to propound the advantages of each and I
think that I, although of the house of McCormick, was
impartial between the two. Yet all our efforts did not
greatly change their relative standing. McCormick and
Deering binder sales in the United States were very
nearly equal in 1903 and very nearly equal for the first
twenty International years; and Deering mower sales
never approximated more than three-quarters of McCor
mick. In the foreign field the early McCormick ascend
ency had established a name for itself that kept it always
slightly in the lead.

152 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

But the great day of the harvesting machine as a leader
of the Company s business was over. New times had
brought new and better methods to the agricultural
equipment world. The tractor had been born and it was
rapidly replacing the horse as a measure of farm power.
The story of the early progress of power farming is a long
one and cannot be told here in its entirety. Suffice it to
say that the invention of the tractor was almost as im
portant to the farmer as the invention of the reaper.

As a matter of fact, both the reaper and the tractor are
similar in their object. The social importance of the
reaper was that it substituted horse-power for the tired
muscles of straining peasants; the social importance of
the tractor is that it substitutes mechanical power for
those tasks which sap the strength of men and animals.
Both brought the power of machinery to the aid of man.
Both presented a way of accomplishing a desired result
with less body-racking, soul-testing effort. Progressively
they freed men s minds from the apparent delusion of
necessity: and then presented an opportunity for work
with brains as a better substitute for work with brawn.
Power farming really began to appear in 1831 with the
invention of the reaper. Its story is perhaps not yet
finished, even with the twentieth century and the inven
tion of the tractor.

The difference between the reaper and the tractor as
examples of applied power is but a matter of degree. It is
certainly true that material progress must be valued in
terms of preceding and surrounding circumstances. The
invention of the reaper would have been unimportant if
it had followed the introduction of the harvester-thresher.
The reaper is remarkable because it was the first machine
to summon the then almost unknown capacity of me
chanics to the relief of manual agriculture. The tractor,

TRANSITION TO MODERN MACHINERY 153

master to-day of a farmer s power problems, is a direct
descendant in the original strain of power application and
labor elimination. It has grown out of the reaper just
as surely as the automobile has risen from the first
wheeled chariot. Man s experience and wisdom could
not in 1831 produce a tractor; but they could not avoid
producing the ancestor of the tractor, the reaper.

The story of the tractor properly begins with the dis
covery of steam. Watt s patent of 1784 was for a steam
road carriage, not for the railway locomotive which
Stephenson produced in 1817 as a better substitute for
the engine of the highways. The first portable steam
power plant was built in Philadelphia in 1849. A year
later, Horace Greeley wrote: The time must be at hand
when every thrifty farmer will have such an engine of
his own, and chopping straw, turning grindstone, cutting
wood, churning, threshing, etc., will cease to be a manual

and become a mechanical operation This engine will

be running on wheels and driving a scythe before it or
drawing a plow behind it within five years. We have
hardly begun to use steam as yet/ In 1867, the United
States Commissioner of Agriculture pointed out that
power could be as helpful to farming as to transportation
in that insufficient power with light plows breaks im
perfectly a shallow depth, while the mighty power of
steam, harnessed to strong implements, breaking, pulver
izing, or intermixing soils, accomplishes all results of a
superior cultivation in less time and at less expense than
any other method.

For many years the application of steam power to
farm problems went no further than threshing, and the
adaptation of power to plowing was not attempted until
near the end of the nineteenth century. Even then the
engines with which plowing was first attempted were

154 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

power plants devised for threshing, movable only for
purposes of transportation from field to field. When
specially designed steam apparatus was produced, it was
not successful. The field locomotive was too cumbersome
and too costly for individual farm use.

The solution of the problem of the tractor lay in
the Otto internal combustion engine of 1876. When the
Otto patents ran out in 1890, so many companies in
different parts of the world leaped into motor activity
that by 1899 there were over a hundred kinds of four
cycle engines on the market. To-day they are all name
less, for, with the exception of Otto, who pioneered the
original process and its theoretical background, no single
inventor can be credited with the discovery of the gas
engine. Otto s name may, if you will, be added to those
of Whitney and McCormick to make up the trio whose
practical researches have for all time been of the greatest
benefit to farmers; but Otto was interested in power
and in the functioning of his device as a prime mover for
all purposes, not in agricultural power as such. The trac
tor of to-day derives its heritage more directly from
the possibly many unnamed individuals who, for and by
themselves, mounted stationary gasoline engines on mov
able frames.

What is supposed to be the first manufactured gasoline
tractor dates from 1895; but this outfit stalled itself in a
newly plowed field and, when it was finally extricated by
half the community, it balked. During the next several
years various individuals sought more or less ineffectu
ally to build farm tractors. These efforts were directed
to produce belt-power machines rather than tractors for
plowing and other mobile work. It required the indirect
impetus of the rapidly developing automobile industry,
which by 1901 was producing some eighteen thousand

TRANSITION TO MODERN MACHINERY 155

motor cars a year, to spur enthusiasts for power farming
into a realization of the scope of the field which lay before
them.

The most noteworthy among the parents of the inter
nal combustion tractor were two young engineers, C. W.
Hart and C. H. Parr, of Charles City, Iowa* In the
winter of 1901, they built a cumbersome two-cylinder,
oil-cooled, slow-speed, two-cycle tractor which, sold
during the following summer to an Iowa farmer, aston
ished all concerned by its ability to operate. The next
year the two men constructed fifteen more tractors. That
these early machines, crude though they may have been,
were sound and serviceable is indicated by the surprising
statement that in 1920 half of this first crop of farm
tractors were still in the hands of farmer owners and still
in operation.

Comparatively few tractors were built by any one
before 1906, when the large-scale tractor industry was
born. Western Canada was then being rapidly devel
oped, the ultimate frontier of the agricultural United
States had not been quite attained, and everywhere
countless weary miles of plodding were awaiting farmers
if they could find no substitute for the horse-drawn plow.
Farmers were demanding general purpose motive power.
There were no more than five hundred tractors in use
upon American and Canadian farms when simultane
ously eleven companies, including International Har
vester, began the manufacture of tractors.

The first machines of the Harvester Company were
equipped with a Milwaukee-made fifteen horse-power
plant mounted on a friction drive chassis produced by
the Ohio Manufacturing Company at Upper Sandusky,
Ohio. The engine had an open crankcase, a single cyl
inder, make-and-break ignition, and spray tank cooling.

156 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

The whole power plant was shifted on rollers to engage
the friction drive disk. Twenty-five of these crude
machines were built and distributed to the territory
for observation. The reports on their behavior were
satisfactory, so in the following year two hundred were
put out. But soon it became apparent that friction
would not serve as a method of transmission; and when
tractor manufacture was transferred in 1908 from Akron,
where it had been housed for a time, to the larger Mil
waukee Works, the standard type of geared transmission
was adopted.

Mechanical plowing was then as essential to the
development of western Canada as the reaper had been
to the prairies across the Mississippi. The world s cry
for bread was insistent, population was lacking, and,
even though the resources of mechanized farm equipment
were marshaled, the task of turning acres of prairie sod
was too great. Saskatchewan and Alberta were measured
in leagues, not in miles, and their huge farms extended
beyond the horizon. Canadian interest in gaining a
mechanical substitute for animal power was therefore
keen. The first of the many great tractor plowing demon
strations was held at Winnipeg in the summer of 1908.
Five manufacturers of gasoline tractors and five ad
herents of steam competed. Kinnard-Haines won, Har
vester placed second, and the ultimate doom of steam
was sounded. The net result of the test was that public
interest was aroused, the mechanical weakness of exist
ing designs was indicated, and a demand for equipment
large enough to suit the conditions of western Canada
became apparent.

Canada was then the leading tractor market, consum
ing over two-thirds of all tractors built and governing
the type by its requirements. There was a second Winni-

TRANSITION TO MODERN MACHINERY 157

peg contest in 1909 and a third in 1910, both of which
marked the trend toward increasing size. Where Har
vester s first machines had been equipped with a modest
fifteen horse-power engine, its two victorious 1909 entries
developed twenty and twenty-five horse-power, and its
1910 model was of forty-five horse-power. Tractor
design was improving, as evidenced by a decrease in the
average weight per horse-power of the contestants from
537 pounds in 1908 to 504 pounds in 1910; but if we may
judge by the standards of to-day, the machines were
huge and lumbering. They ground their way slowly
across the long field, cutting a wide furrow with as many
as fifteen plow bottoms. This was the way western
Canada wanted its sod turned.

The 1910 demonstration marked the first surrender of
steam to gasoline and also the first appearance of kero
sene as a fuel. For a time the threshermen fought against
internal combustion. There are tales of bitter hand-to-
hand combats; but their opposition was of no avail. Their
ranks began to break when Rumely deserted steam and
produced Kerosene Annie/ whose approach to Winnipeg
was celebrated by a flaring advertising campaign which
did more to capture popular attention for the tractor than
a dozen shows.

The International Harvester Company climbed ahead
of Hart-Parr as the leading producer in 1910, and by 191 1
was responsible for perhaps a third of the United States
output. In 1912, it made over three thousand tractors,
followed by Rumely with nearly as many, and by Hart-
Parr. Public interest seemed to center solely in the big
gest machines. At the Winnipeg show in 1912, the aver
age brake horse-power of the contestants exceeded fifty.
Editorial writers clamored for small tractors; the Ameri
can trade was becoming important and American farms

158 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

were smaller than Canadian; engineers dreamed of small
power units but the public seemed to want nothing
but the largest, heaviest machine possible. Harvester
would have preferred to refine its original fifteen and
twenty horse-power models rather than to explore an
uncertain way into the sphere of magnitude where it
had no experience. But it was helpless in the face of
the demand. Thus, when Tractor Works was built in
Chicago in 1910, the first buildings resembled a loco
motive shop more than an implement works. The Com
pany s position in the industry was based on the sale of
many comparatively inexpensive implements to many
fanners; but now its leading tractor was a sixty horse
power monster that weighed eleven tons. Its chief publi
city stunt was to link three of these huge engines together
and, pulling fifty-five plows, to turn a furrow sixty-four
feet wide.

True to its traditions, the Harvester Company no
sooner found itself in the tractor business than it began
to seek to develop exports. In 1908, one of the early
machines was shipped to France and one to Australia.
The French machine competed at Amiens with a number
of European makes and was victorious. Apparently its
performance astounded the spectators, for the manager
of the Paris office wrote, I am pleased to say that our
tractor worked two complete days without stopping for a
single instant owing to any defect or disarrangement of
the working parts. Soon International tractors appeared
also in Russia, Austria, Mexico, and the Argentine. Rus
sian wheat farms were huge, not unlike those of western
Canada, and the tractor received a ready welcome.
Plowing with three yoke of oxen to each bottom was
tedious and expensive, and the larger landowners were
eager for relief. Nevertheless, it may well be imagined

INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER TRACTOR SHOWN AT AMIENS,
FRANCE, 1909

THREE INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER TRACTORS PULLING
FIFTY-FIVE PLOW-BOTTOMS

TRANSITION TO MODERN MACHINERY 159

that the cost of the monster tractors then in vogue was
high and that distance and inexperience made efficient
repair and expert service almost impossible. The wonder
of it is that any company was so easily able to distribute
tractors in the distant quarters of the globe.

The big tractor phase collapsed of its own weight* It
may be presumed that the power needs of large farmers,
hitherto accustomed to huge steam outfits, had required
such a type. But the sixty horse-power giant demanded
too much attention, too much skill in operation. Too
many farmers, following the fashion, bought powerful
machines for which they had no practical use. In 1914,
there was a partial crop failure and many purchasers were
unable to meet the deferred payments, which necessarily
had to be so much larger than the sums they were accus
tomed to pay for implements. As a result of crop condi
tions and the outbreak of war in Europe, the land boom
in western Canada collapsed. The great Rumely tractor
and thresher consolidation effected in 1912 failed, and
Harvester experienced the most unfortunate credit ratio
in its history. The Company had exceeded all others
in sales volume because of its great distributing ability;
but its position was nevertheless not a dominating one.
That was to come with the small tractor which could be
built in quantities by production methods and which,
consistent with Harvester traditions, could be a machine
for all farmers. An industry may render service best
when it deals with the many, not with the few.

The credit for producing the first light tractor must be
given to the Bull Tractor Company, which in 1913 intro
duced a remarkable and radically different machine.
The tractor weighed only three thousand pounds. It was
provided with a single huge bull wheel and a direct con
nected two-cylinder engine without transmission gears

160 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

or differential. It sold for the unbelievably low price of
$395. The little Bull gave place next year to the Big
Bull, a slightly more powerful machine. It was never a
mechanically sound product, but its commercial popu
larity was such that it swept the field.

International Harvester was quick to follow this oppor
tunity. It introduced a kerosene-burning, slow-speed,
single-cylinder machine with planetary transmission and
a single drive chain, known as the Mogul 8-16 (meaning
eight horse-power at the drawbar and sixteen at the belt
pulley), which was built at Tractor Works. Then, be
cause of the fact that there were two lines of dealers to
foster, another tractor was developed at Milwaukee, the
Titan 10-20. This was a two-cylinder affair with high-
tension ignition, a standard type of transmission, and a
double chain drive. It had been intended to accompany
the Deering line, just as the Mogul was classified with
the McCormick; but this plan of alleviations would not
work. The same men had designed both machines, and
quite naturally they built into the second the experience
gained in making the first. Furthermore, the Mogul
would pull two plow bottoms under average conditions,
whereas the more powerful Titan would handle three.

The Company was still making large tractors both at
Milwaukee and at Tractor Works; but the vitality of
the industry lay in the smaller machines. In 1915, the
financial situation of farmers began to improve, and,
spurred by the prospect of war prices, they planned to
bring more extensive acreage into production. So strong
Was their interest in labor-saving, cost-reducing equip
ment that manufacturers and salesmen began to engage
in a mad scramble to enter the tractor business. A man
with any new idea would build a tractor around it and
rush out to the country to look for purchasers. There

TRANSITION TO MODERN MACHINERY 161

were one hundred and thirty listed tractor companies,
whereas but fifty were actually able to make deliveries.

The Winnipeg contest had given place to one at Fre
mont, Nebraska. With the great spread of tractor inter
est, it became necessary in 1916 to organize a circuit of
large demonstrations. Numberless local shows also took
place in connection with county fairs or to settle com
petitive controversies. The national demonstrations
were held in sequence at Dallas, Hutchinson, St. Louis,
Fremont, Cedar Rapids, Bloomington, Indianapolis, and
Madison. Tractor farming was becoming the order of the
day. Nearly all the machines manufactured in 1916 were
sold in the United States. The war-time demand was
especially keen in 1917, when, out of a total of over
sixty-two thousand made, fifteen thousand were shipped
abroad. England, France, and Italy bought most of
them to aid their food production.

In 1918, tractor production more than doubled. There
were over two hundred tractor companies competing for
the rapidly growing business. Bull dropped out of the
picture, and Holt was making treads for tanks. Most of
the manufacturers were transient companies which fell
quickly or never got started. Many of the pioneers of
the tractor industry had collapsed with the decline of
the big tractor and more of the weaker newcomers were
passing out each year. Nevertheless, the insatiable war
time demands for food production and the soaring prices
of farm products made the problem of tractor manu
facture seem easy. International Harvester was the
leading producer, followed by Case, Avery, and Moline.

Henry Ford s intention to build farm tractors was
announced in 1915, and, though he probably never said
it, he was credited with the intention of selling his pro
posed machine for two hundred dollars. The miracles

162 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

he had accomplished with his car made the public believe
that, when it appeared, it would be the last word, and
that a jitney tractor* would bring salvation to agri
culture. He had been conducting experimental work for
a long time on his own estates and began production
in 1917 with the sale of six thousand to the British
Government. Ford tractors first appeared on American
farms in 1918.

The Ford tractor or Fordson, as it was properly
called was the first of the unit types to achieve wide
spread popularity. Its comparatively low price soon
gave it the leading position in the industry and its con
struction helped to set the type for all tractors of that
day. There can be no question that the development of
tractor design had been to a certain extent haphazard.
For years it had been entirely in the hands of implement
men who had too slight a contact with the refinements
and research of the automobile industry. Because it is
so purely a farm machine, it was eminently correct for
the tractor to remain an inherent part of the implement
business ; and therefore it can be understood why, before
1917, it partook so little of automobile standards. The
first machines had depended upon their bulk of material
to give them strength. Even the intermediate tractors,
like the Mogul and the Titan, were excessively heavy,
weighing two hundred pounds for each engine horse
power as compared to one hundred and fifty-six pounds
for the tractor of 1931. With them began the inclusion of
modern features, such as high duty bearings and alloy
steels, but they did not in any intimate way resemble the
precision engineered and manufactured masterpiece of
to-day.

Also in 1917, the Society of Tractor Engineers amalga
mated with the Society of Automotive Engineers. Im-

TRANSITION TO MODERN MACHINERY 163

mediately the tractor companies gained the benefit of the
experience-earned knowledge of the automobile world.
This the tractor men needed badly. There were many
things they did not know about the fine points of internal
combustion, gears, and the like; much that they had to
learn about heat treatment of steel and the strength
of materials. Standardization of parts, also, although
widely practiced in the case of agricultural implements,
had made but slight progress in tractors. Such refine
ment of design as made the Ford tractor noteworthy had
been too much a closed book.

Looking ahead from that time or back from this, I can
realize how much the International Harvester Company
had to learn ; and I can take pride in the speed with which
we acquired and assimilated the necessary knowledge.
That we were able to do so was our salvation. The Mogul
8-1 6 had given way to a four-cylinder tractor of the same
power; but the good old Titan 10-20 still forged on, most
popular of all tractors, and the men of Milwaukee Works
were accustomed to relate proudly how one was started
every four-and-a-half minutes. Even In 1919, tractors
were the largest single item of our production. We knew
how much money they were saving farmers, we knew
what service they were performing. And we knew that
the story of farm power, begun when the reaper took the
place of a scytheman s muscles, was being retold in
the tractor.

CHAPTER X
LAWSUITS, WAR, AND DEPRESSION

SHORTLY after the formation of the International Har
vester Company was announced in 1902, certain indi
viduals raised the cry that here was another private
corporation formed to mulct the public. The early years
of the twentieth century were a period when many be
lieved that consolidation was intended to enrich a few
business barons at the expense of the many. Politicians
all over the country began to inveigh against the trusts/
political campaigns turned on the question, people be
came aroused at what they feared would be an invasion
of personal well-being by private capital. It is therefore
probable that, whether it deserved it or not, rural opinion
would have been skeptical of the new corporation.

The early skepticism was temporarily fanned into
active opposition by petty politicians, eager to ride to
higher offices on such public clamor as they could arouse.
It is pleasant to know that long since, after the hue and
cry has been faced and has subsided and, out of closer
acquaintance with the Company, farmers have learned
to regard it with respect and esteem. They have discov
ered the benefit to them of Harvester s business methods,
and they have come to appreciate the quality of its
machines and its services. They have heard charges
made, they have seen lawsuits filed, the stated object of
which was to protect the farm from the grasp of the
harvester trust and now they know that the tribu
nals of the public have vindicated the Company from
every charge of wrongful practice. Rural opinion is no
longer skeptical : it is positive, hearty, friendly in a man-

LAWSUITS, WAR, AND DEPRESSION 165

to-man sort of way. Out of their own experience farmers
have welcomed the International Harvester Company
to the farm side of the farm problem.

But in 1905, officials in certain States began to attack
the Company. Their cry was that the agricultural im
plement trust enjoyed a monopoly because of valuable
patent rights; that prior to 1902, the trade was in a
normal, healthy condition, and that the only possible
object of consolidation was more easily to crush com
petitors and gouge consumers; that prices and profits had
been materially increased; that the products of the new
company were sold cheaper abroad than at home, thus
making the American farmer pay the price of volume
production ; and that individual representatives had com
mitted every crime in the penal code of commerce.

As is known to-day, this local agitation was the result
of the acts of other consolidations, or the refusal of the
Harvester Company to submit to public or private ex
tortion, or the endeavor of self-seeking minor officials
to get preferment out of what they thought would be a
popular clamor, or it arose simply out of the trust-
busting temper of the times. I presume that I myself,
who am so obviously partisan and who know so inti
mately the high ideals inherited by my father and his
associates from my grandfather, am not equipped to
speak impartially on these matters. I also know we
salesmen were invariably cautioned to live our business
lives by the same high dictates of personal conscience
which guided the owners of the business and our other
superior officers. And I am very well aware how, now
that legal difficulties are happily a thing of the past and
the Company has been vindicated, these ideals have
permeated every rank of the many associated activities.
They have inspired all Harvester men to a business life

166 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

hewn four-square with the best rules of ethical conduct.
I venture to state that if a Harvester man now chose to
commit an economic crime, the sin would expose itself.

Whether or not I may qualify sufficiently as an his
torian to speak impersonally of these matters, let me say
this in comment on the charges: They are all of them
false. No one of them has ever been proved in or out of
court. All of them have been disproved to the complete
satisfaction of every court or other tribunal that has ever
considered them. One and all have been withdrawn,
jointly or severally, by every State or Federal prosecutor
who has ever attacked the Company. In all its history
the sole fault found with the Company has been its size
resulting from consolidation, not its conduct. Because of
this, it has paid the penalty of years of litigation. But if
institutions, like people, may be judged by their acts, it
can be proud of the fact that no competitor, few retail
dealers, and scant farmers have ever testified against it.

The selling branch of the Harvester Company was
fined in Arkansas in 1906 because of the size of its capital
and withdrew from the State until 1913 when the hostile
law was repealed at the request of the entire agricul
tural and business community. Ouster proceedings were
brought in Kansas in 1906 and settled in 1910. Many
farmers testified that prices had not been increased and
that service had been improved. The State Supreme
Court therefore assessed a fine on purely legal grounds and
permitted the business to continue, holding that it was
not in the public interest to eject the Company. In 1907,
an ouster suit was brought in Missouri which resulted in
the complete exoneration of the Company as to every
thing except the legality of its formation through con
solidation, a suspended sentence on that sole ground, and
this flattering statement by Missouri s Chief Justice: It

LAWSUITS, WAR, AND DEPRESSION 167

would be an injury to the people of this State to forbid
the International Harvester Company to do business
here/ In 1907, the Company evacuated Texas to protect
its employees who would have been liable to personal
fines if they sold its commodities within that State, and
thereafter a judgment of ouster was entered. When I
.was a branch manager in Kansas and Oklahoma, I used
to stand by the border of forbidden Texas and long to
explore it, but we were under the strictest orders not to
go. But in 1919, after the decree of ouster had been
modified to permit it to return, the Harvester Company
came back to the State by invitation of the people. In
Kentucky, where eighty-eight per cent of all fines col
lected went as fees to public officials, the Company fled
from a horde of petty county suits and remained away
until the State anti-trust laws were declared uncon
stitutional.

After the period of local attacks, Harvester was called
upon to face the hostility of the United States Govern
ment, which was a far more serious matter. The first
of the two Federal suits, which shadowed the middle
period of the Company s history, was brought in 1912 as
a partial result of an investigation by the United States
Bureau of Corporations. The Government s petition
charged that the Company had been formed to effect a
competition-destroying monopoly in harvesting machin
ery and binder twine. It claimed that over eighty-five
per cent of all harvesting equipment sold in the United
States were International products; that prices had been
advanced to the grave injury of the farmer; and that the
Company had striven successfully to eliminate competi
tion. This had been accomplished, it was alleged, by
exclusive contracts with local dealers, by threats to
dealers, and by gobbling up all available dealers. A

168 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

huge patent monopoly had been created, it was averred,
thus preventing others from entering the harvester field.
It was charged that competitors had been purchased and
absorbed and their products abandoned once they were
out of the way, that potential competitors were frightened
off, and that unfair trade practices were resorted to in
order to injure existing competitors.

These charges were unjust and untrue. They hurt
both the Company s business and its ability to serve the
farmer. Self-seeking politicians cheered and farmers
wondered how an institution they were learning to re
spect could be so sinful. Harvester men, who knew the
Company s policy because they were its living expression,
bitterly resented the accusations. It became their turn
to applaud when testimony in the case was taken. The
Government could find in the entire country but a cor
poral s guard of witnesses to come forward and testify
against the Company. Several of the harshest allegations
were abandoned when the case came to trial. All of them
just as in the earlier State ouster suits except the
charge of a preponderant percentage in the old harvester
lines, fell to the ground for want of even the slightest
shred of proof.

It would be tedious to follow the case through the story
of the testimony of twelve hundred witnesses which filled
ten thousand printed pages. Suffice it to say that Judges
Smith and Hook, of the United States District Court of
Minnesota, gave the Company a clean bill of health for
its conduct, but convicted it because of its origin through
the consolidation of former competitors. Judge Sanborn
dissented, holding that the absence of injury to the
public and the freedom of competition that had been
proved should govern the issue.

The adverse decision of the Court was not based on

LAWSUITS, WAR, AND DEPRESSION 169

the ground that the organizers of the Company had an
unlawful purpose, or that competition was not free and
active, or that the Company s business conduct had been
wrongful. On the contrary, Harvester s methods were
characterized as honorable, clean, and fair/ and the
many charges of improper business practices made in the
Government petition were called unwarranted and with
out foundation. The legal issue, as it lay in the minds of
the majority of the Court, was this: The consolidation of
the five companies in 1902 had quite naturally eliminated
competition between them. Trade in binders, mowers,
and rakes was held to be directly restrained by the fact
that International thus acquired such a substantial per
centage of the total business. This restraint was held to
create a potential monopoly in violation of the Sherman
Law, not because of the Company s actual conduct, but
because of its alleged power to dominate a power
which probably did not exist and certainly had not been
exercised. The Court therefore ordered the Company
dissolved into such separate parts as would be necessary
to restore competition.

It is hard to believe that the mild-tempered president
of the International Harvester Company, whose great
sense of honor and justice and fair play had set the pat
tern for his organization s conduct, was not disgusted
when he said: The conclusion arrived at seems to be
that the Harvester is a good but illegal trust. Its business
has been conducted fairly and the economies secured by
its organization have inured to the benefit of its cus
tomers, the farmers, but nevertheless its existence is
illegal/

The opinion of the Court was filed in August, I9H-
The International Harvester Company immediately
appealed to the United States Supreme Court. There,

170 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

because of the importance of the legal issues involved,
it was set at the head of the docket and was argued in
April, 1915. The Justices could not agree, so they or
dered a rehearing. A year and a half dragged along, with
no adjudication of the Government s interpretation of
the Sherman Law and no relief for the Company from
the threat of dissolution. Early in 1917, it was thought
by both sides that the Harvester case could be heard
simultaneously with the case of the United States Steel
Corporation, both of which turned on the question
whether a combination which occupied a preponderant
position in its business constituted a violation of the
law. Again the case was argued and again the Supreme
Court failed to reach an agreement. The situation was
getting desperate.

In the meantime the United States had entered the
World War. Seven important anti-trust suits, including
the Harvester and Steel cases, were awaiting judicial
settlement. If the Government should win, seven im
portant sources of munitions and supplies essential to
the country and to the war might be crippled, and any
new financing required by a dissolution decree would
draw funds away from the Nation s war chest. So, early
in 1918, they were all postponed. Further delay was
more than the long-suffering International Harvester
Company could stand, and in the following summer it
accepted terms of honorable surrender. Any definite
situation was to be preferred to the uncertainty of never-
ending litigation.

Formed in 1902 with no wrongful purpose and in the
belief that it was entirely legal, the Company had from
1905 been the object of attack in various State courts.
Its conduct had invariably been found blameless. The
Federal suit was brought in 1912, and six years later it

LAWSUITS, WAR, AND DEPRESSION 171

was still undecided. If the Government should win, the
Company would be dismembered in 1918 or some later
year on the strength of testimony taken in 1913 for legal
errors committed in 1902, In the meantime the war had
played havoc with its entire affairs. For business reasons,
the foreign factories and sales as well as the bulk of the
new lines had been segregated in a separate company,
the International Harvester Corporation. But, because
of war losses, the Corporation could not find capital, for
example for needed tractor expansion; and if the original
company were dissolved, it could give the Corporation
no financial assistance. Therefore, it was obviously
necessary to put the two halves of the business together
again, provided an understanding with the Government
could be reached. Any even partly satisfactory com
promise would be better than continued nerve-racking
uncertainty.

A so-called consent decree of 1918, which was later
approved by the Court, was arranged between the Har
vester lawyers, John P. Wilson, Edgar A. Bancroft, and
William D. McHugh, who had so ably led the Com
pany s long fight, and the Attorney-General. The appeal
to the Supreme Court was dismissed, which in effect
sustained the Government s view of the legal issue. The
International agreed to divest itself of the Osborne,
Champion, and Milwaukee lines of harvesting machines
and the works where they were made. Beginning with
1920, it was to have no more than one dealer in a town.
At the end of eighteen months after the close of the war,
the Government was to have the right to reopen the case
to determine whether these measures had resulted in
the restoration of competition. As a by-product of this
compromise, Harvester was to be permitted to take on
the manufacture and sale of plows which was only

I 7 2 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

fair, since it could not hope to sell the three harvester
lines except to some plow group. But under this de
cree a considerable volume of sales and the goodwill
of three established trade names would be transferred
away from the International to competitors, who would
thereby grow stronger. Also, whatever it might gain
from entry into the already occupied plow field would
hardly compensate for the loss of five thousand organized
and effective retail selling agencies with which business
to the amount of $17,000,000 a year was then being done.
Cyrus H. McCormick doubtless felt as dispirited as did
his father when he was denied the extension of his patents
or was beaten by Manny.

If the very natural desire to be free from the Dam-
oclean threat of the Government suit was not an amply
sufficient reason for the Harvester Company s agreement
to the so-called consent decree, it may also be understood
that at the same time the war was presenting an appar
ently insuperable obstacle to progress. But, however
difficult had been the years since 1914, the outbreak of
the war furnished the best possible tribute to the basic
nature of the Company s activities and to the world-wide
need for its services. The armies might fight, but they
and the civilian population behind them had to eat. Men
were with the colors, and, as in the case of the American
Civil War, machines alone could take their places on the
farms of the embattled nations. Quite naturally the war
restricted the Harvester Company s former European
volume; but farms demanded equipment, and, with the
exception of a few small implement factories in France,
Bohemia, Sweden, and England, there were practically
no European manufacturers of harvesting and other
agricultural machinery. The world trade was virtually
in the hands of Americans and Canadians. The Inter-

LAWSUITS, WAR, AND DEPRESSION 173

national Harvester Company was the largest factor, with
Massey-Harris of Toronto second. When women took
the place of men on the farms of France, Germany, and
Britain, and when great estates, hitherto devoted to
other purposes, were turned to grain production, Har
vester s machines were required in great numbers* Its
binders and mowers were rushed to take the place of the
still-used scythe, its tractors were pressed into service
in the stead of farm horses become army mounts. Under
the compulsion of war necessity, Europe learned, as had
America, that farm production costs could be reduced
by the use of modern equipment.

The foreign factories, if they were able to operate at
all, were quite naturally hampered by the difficulty of
securing adequate materials. The German twine mill had
to close because of inability to secure a supply of fiber,
and the French factory was being used as a cavalry bar
racks by the Germans. As soon as the United States
entered the war, the German factory passed out of the
Company s control and into the hands of a government
receiver. But prices of farm products were rising in the
face of the unusual demand for food, and the volume of
sales remained fairly steady. The various governments,
of course, controlled purchases and restricted them to
necessities; so it can be said that International Harvester
implements and tractors served the cause of food pro
duction as ably as had McCormick reapers in Civil War
times.

As the war dragged along, it became apparent that
decline of business would not be the only loss the Com
pany would have to face. Because of the non-existence
of exchange, it had been impossible to transfer funds
from parts of Europe to America. All trade with Ger
many was embargoed; Russia was living behind a wall

174 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

of war. The Russian factory continued to operate during
1917; but when the Russian political, economic, and
social structure collapsed, it became known that the
losses in central and eastern Europe would be calamitous.
When the picture of this disaster became complete
after the war, the Company had to face the fact that
every penny it had ever invested in Russia had gone. All
of the profits of the Russian business up to 1914 had been
put back into the many branch warehouses and the
factory; and after the commencement of the war the
great stocks of machines and materials on hand had been
converted. The proceeds were on deposit in various
banks, the value of which paper, after the Bolshevik
rebellion, declined to nothing. The factory itself re
mained in the hands of Harvester representatives until
1924, when the Soviet Government simply walked in
and took it over, without payment or promise of one cent
of compensation. It did this because the Company was
obviously unwilling to sink additional money in Russia
and continued to operate the plant only so long as ma
terials could be purchased from the proceeds of the con
stantly decreasing Russian business itself. Russia needed
machines, but the total collapse of the nation s structure
made the hoe rather than the lobogreika the necessary
measure of farm equipment. Factory, warehouses, in
ventories, and bank deposits everything Harvester
had in Russia vanished. Such satisfaction as the Com
pany could find in the fact that, due to the faith of the
workmen, the plant remained in its possession long after
every other foreign property had been nationalized, was
the sole compensation for twenty years of service to
Russian agriculture. There were losses, too, in Germany,
Austria, and Roumania. The French factory had been
stripped of every bit of equipment. The sum of the cost

LAWSUITS, WAR, AND DEPRESSION 175

of the war was staggering. The International Harvester
Company remained solvent only because of wise manage
ment, a widely diversified world business, and an aggres
sively conservative financial system.

The effect of the war in America was measured by the
frantic war-born industrial boom. The Company s war
record, though perhaps praiseworthy, was not essentially
different from that of many other great American com
mercial institutions. Its subscriptions to loans and its
donations to war charities were large; many of its em
ployees enlisted in the army or the navy, and too many
fell in defense of the country; and at one time or another
four of the seven chief operating officials were in Govern
ment service in Washington. It also made enormous
numbers of shell-adapters, hand grenades, motor-truck
bodies, transport wagons, and artillery wheels; but its
best service of supply was to produce its own essential
machines.

It can be easily remembered how the war-time demand
for labor, food, and every type of supply sent the cost of
all production skyrocketing. Where conservative busi
ness men would have much preferred a stable market, the
price of every article of consumption increased. Steel,
pig iron, and lumber advanced; and wages more than
doubled. Then men discovered that each one of them was
not only an employee whose pay envelope was thicker,
but also a consumer of other people s products, and that
price was, after all, merely a reflection of cost. Thus the
High Cost of Living came to be a subject of general dis
cussion, too many people in all walks of life sought^ to
counteract this new and mysterious doctrine by getting
more in income than they gave in efficiency, the evil of
cost plus war production sapped the morals of manage
ment and labor alike, and the war stalked into history,

176 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

as sorry a thing for civilians as for the men at the front.

By the beginning of 1919, when every one was expect
ing war prosperity to crash, the cost of living had in
creased seventy per cent as compared with 1914, the
wages of Harvester workers had doubled, purchased
materials had kept pace, and the price of its machines
had advanced by a half. The prices of most articles used
by American manufacturers, as for example steel and
coal, were stabilized under Government control; and
farm products, as for example wheat, were similarly regu
lated. But America paid dearly for what it had to buy
from abroad. Nitrates made Chile rich, and a sisal fiber
monopoly in Yucatan took millions from the American
user of binder twine. Fiber rose to the hitherto un
dreamed-of height of nineteen cents per pound, but
Mexico lay beyond the reach of the arm of the Sherman
Law. Then, because the fattened prosperity of war days
did not seem to vanish easily, all classes of men went
economically rnad. Possessions were discarded in favor
of new purchases, labor demanded and secured an in
creasing portion of the consumer s dollar, prices soared
beyond the artificially high levels of the war, and quick
riches for all took the place of efficiency as a living ideal.
By the end of 1920, when the specter of reckoning stalked
upon the scene, wages throughout the country were two-
and-a-half times the rate of 1914, and the weighted cost
of living, which reflected the higher price of everything
one had to buy, had doubled.

It is true of the agricultural implement business that,
although its peaks and valleys roughly follow general busi
ness, both depression and recovery reach it later than the
rest of commerce and industry. Depression moves from
the East to the West: scattered fanners of the country
feel trends and tendencies less quickly than do the organ-

LAWSUITS, WAR, AND DEPRESSION 177

ized inhabitants of an urban community. But hindsight
is always better informed than foresight, and it is prob
able that these economic axioms were not appreciated
in 1921. At all events, every business unit which did not
immediately feel a cessation of buying power and recog
nize depression believed that, by the operation of some
special providence, its own sales would continue una
bated. This error of judgment seriously affected the
whole of American industry.

The stronger implement companies, such as Deere,
Oliver, Massey-Harris, Case, and Harvester, had realized
that the frantic prosperity of those days was not real.
They did not know when the break would come, but some
of them had had foresight enough to create special re
serves to provide for the sure losses of an indeterminate
future. They were able to pull through while some
weaker companies were wiped out; and they did so in
spite of the fact that the depression years following 1920
were more disastrous than the damage occasioned by
the war.

The measure of that business disaster, when the Inter
national Harvester Company rocked and bowed before
the storm that wrecked so many enterprises, is quickly
told. Wages were twice reduced; the salary of every
executive, high and low, was cut; expenditures for im
provements, shut off for a time during the war, were
again restricted ; and all the factories were closed or oper
ated on pitiably reduced schedules. The 1921 business
amounted to but half of the previous year s volume.
Large losses were sustained in the domestic trade, the
only profit earned was made abroad, and reduced divi
dends were paid out of surplus. In 1922, the situation
was slightly better or perhaps it would be more accu
rate to say that Harvester men had become somewhat

178 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

more accustomed to their misfortune. The price of every
article sold by the Company had, of course, been slashed
to the bone, but buying did not revive. The year s net
profits again failed by several million dollars to provide
even the reduced dividends.

It must not be thought that this was an isolated
tragedy. The whole economic mechanism of American
life was crippled ; and the business of fanning together
with everything dependent upon it suffered most of
all. The price of wheat, which in the halcyon days of the
war had been kept down to three dollars a bushel, fell
in 1921 to a dollar. Cotton dropped twenty cents a
pound. Corn remained unharvested in the fields or was
burned for fueL The price of cattle and hogs fell until
every animal was a liability. Worst of all, the farmers
had, in effect, been speculating as wildly in land as urban-
ites had been in the swollen profits of industry. Land
values collapsed all over the country, and many a hard
working purchaser of inflated acres was immediately
bankrupt. The country banks had lent money to finance
the acquisition, for double and treble prices, of fields
which could not possibly be made to pay, now that the
days of high prices for farm products were over. They
could foreclose on their mortgages, but that would avail
them nothing. Frozen credits became the order of the
day in the country as in the city. The farmer could not
make a profit on what he had to sell, his usual channels
of credit were closed, he had nothing wherewith to buy.
All he could do was hope and go on working.

The enormous damage caused by the depression can be
appreciated when it is remembered that, before the end
of 1920, the International Harvester Company had pro
vided an inventory of materials for a 1921 business which
was expected to be huge. The inflated value of this in-

LAWSUITS, WAR, AND DEPRESSION 179

ventory was due to the highest cost of materials in all
the Company s history. Then the decline began. Al
most overnight steel, for example, fell from a high point
of the year of seventy-five dollars per ton to thirty
dollars. Machines made of high-priced material had
to be sold for depreciated values. Therefore, the Com
pany had not only to bear the brunt of the shrinkage of
its own inventory value, but was compelled either to
sustain those of its dealers who had stocked up with
machines in anticipation of bumper business or to see
them collapse. It withstood the shock by the same
means that had aided it through the calamity of war
losses.

Without any question wise management had much to
do with the fact that International Harvester succeeded
in weathering the storm. Since late 1918, Cyrus H.
McCormick had been chairman of the board, and,
although no longer directly concerned with the details of
operations, his kindly and wise influence was strong.
His brother Harold, a product of the same tradition, was
president for a time and Alex Legge was general man
ager Legge, the same forceful leader of other days,
but with his experience deepened and his outlook broad
ened by contact with the many leaders the war brought
to Washington. The various operating departmental
heads were largely the same men as those who had given
Harvester Spirit to the organization. Now, however,
their duty was to rein in instead of to push on toward the
triumphs of an expanding business. They used the tragic
lessons of the period of depression to make the Company
efficient.

No amount of efficiency alone, however, could have
saved money enough out of operating economies to per
mit Harvester to live on. Huge losses were written off

i8o THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

both in 1921 and 1922 to cover inventory depreciation.
The Harvester management had known that the agri
cultural implement industry must be as prepared for
valleys as for peaks, and that the abnormal prosperity of
post-war days could not last forever. It did not foresee
the imminence of the crash, but it had planned against
ultimate depression by storing up a buffer of accumulated
reserves. As the price of materials and labor increased,
beginning in 1917, a suitable portion of the earnings was
segregated against inevitable reaction by carrying the
basic inventory at 1916 costs. This advance provision
of a cushion to soften the blow of an unseen storm was
badly needed; for during the two years of business de
pression, the Company consumed all the reserves, made
virtually no profit, and met such reduced dividends as it
paid out of surplus. When, by the end of 1922, costs of
materials had settled down to a new and saner level, the
price of incipient disaster had been met out of inventory
write-downs and reduced surplus. Parenthetically it is
pleasant to record the fact that the cushion policy of
advance provision for an unexpected business decline is
being continued through the medium of reserves.

By 1923, the low prices for farm products recovered
somewhat, the farmer began to buy again, and Interna
tional s business began slowly to recover. But in July of
that year, the skies again darkened as the Attorney-
General of the United States filed a petition to reopen the
old anti-trust suit and the settlement of 1918. This time
the Government s concern was more for Harvester s com
petitors than for the farmer. The main allegation was
that the 1918 consent decree had failed to reestablish
competition and that the Harvester Company was selling
at cost with a view of eliminating competitors. It was
said that the sale of the Champion, Osborne, and Mil-

LAWSUITS, WAR, AND DEPRESSION 181

waukee lines had achieved merely an immaterial effect,
and that their purchasers and other competitors were
growing weaker each year under the strokes of Interna
tional policy. Where the original suit had sought to prove
injury to the farmer through overpricing and other al
leged nefarious acts (all of which were disproved), the
second suit suggested that competitors were being harmed
by underpricing.

The St. Paul District Court, however, found otherwise.
In May, 1925, two of the three judges decided for the
Company. They found that trade was free and not re
strained or monopolized, that the Harvester Company s
portion of the country s harvesting machinery trade had
declined, and that prices were low and favorable to the
farmer. One judge held that because of its size the Com
pany had the power to do evil, and should therefore be
restrained. This time it was the Government, the loser
in the case, that appealed to the Supreme Court.

There, in 1927, it pleaded that competition similar to
what had existed before 1902 should be reestablished ; but
this contention the Court refused to sustain. It expressed
the opinion that the Harvester Company had complied
with the 1918 decision in good faith and should not be
dismembered. Much of the evidence had been founded
on a 1920 report of the Federal Trade Commission which,
on the basis of ex parte evidence taken in advance of the
test period provided by the Court s decision, had ex
pressed the belief that the consent decree would prove a
failure. This report the Supreme Court brushed aside,
as it did all of the Government s argument. The growth
of the Company was due to the development of the full
line, not to the disputed harvesting machinery. The
sale of the three lines to responsible manufacturers had
been made as required by the 1918 decree. The limitation

182 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

to but one dealer in a community had been adhered to
and had been of substantial assistance to competitors,
as they themselves had testified. Harvester had not used
its strength oppressively, it had not sought to dominate
the trade, it had not employed unfair practices against
competitors. The law/ said the Supreme Court, does
not make the mere size of a corporation ... an offense
when unaccompanied by unlawful conduct in the exercise
of its power.

The opinion went on to point out that in 1923 the
International had as many and stronger harvesting-
machine competitors than in 1911; that its percentage
of the trade had declined; and that the entry of new com
petitors into the field proved the freedom of competitive
conditions.

Thus at last, after so many years of doubt, the Inter
national Harvester Company was free. The case had
dragged along for such a time that harvesting machines,
for which the Government was fighting, were no longer a
major consideration in the industry. The very charge
had veered from high prices and injury to consumers to
low prices and injury to competitors. Three of the nine
Justices of the Court had through the years become dis
qualified by participation in or contact with the early
stages of the case. The Company, organized in 1902 and
pilloried from 1905 to 1927, was at last returned to ordi
nary life and to the judgment of ordinary rules of conduct
where an individual may be valued, not by a nonex
istent reputation, but by his acts.

I shall never forget the scene in the Harvester offices
as word of the Supreme Court s decision, read with due
preliminary formality and distressing deliberation, kept
coming over the long-distance telephone. I suppose we
might have preserved a philosophic calm but we could

LAWSUITS, WAR, AND DEPRESSION 183

not. With the words, We cannot sustain this conten
tion . . . we knew that we had won. We had known that
we were right but were we within the law?

We had the tradition of an ideal of service behind us;
the fruition of our hopes lay ahead. Perhaps we had
been attending too much to our business and had taken
too little time for the theories underlying academic debate,
perhaps we lived too close to the actuality of existence
to have sufficient concern for the maze of the law. We
could not understand why, if our acts measured four
square with every standard of business conduct, we
should be drawn and quartered for the legal errors of
1902. Now we knew we were lawful as well as right and
could continue our work. Again that subtle influence
called Harvester Spirit, working quietly and grandly and
justly in our lives and in the deeds which were the con
structive reaction of our efforts, had rescued the Com
pany from the supposed hostility of the alleged law.

Of all the baseless charges leveled at the Harvester
Company throughout the years, there is one other which
deserves to be dignified by more than passing mention,
and that, not because it has ever had any foundation,
but because of its persistence. Soon after the formation
of the International, the story was somehow started that
it was discriminating against American farmers and
favoring foreign farmers by selling its American-made
implements cheaper abroad than at home. Never the
subject of litigation, no one proved the charge or at
tempted to prove it; but politicians did not hesitate to
repeat it whenever it served their interests to bait the
Harvester Company. It persists strangely to this day,
notwithstanding the fact that not a single instance of
dumping Harvester goods abroad has ever been found.

No better illustration could be discovered of the diffi-

184 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

culty of truth overtaking falsehood. Harvester Company
officials have denied the allegation whenever they could
confront it. It was investigated in 1912 by direction of
Secretary Nagel, of the Department of Commerce and
Labor, and found to be untrue. It was investigated again
in 1928 by the United States Consular Service at the in
stance of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, and
again found to be untrue. The facts have been publicly
referred to as conclusive by Secretary of Agriculture
Hyde and by members of Congress. They are posted on
the record where those who run may read and yet the
twenty-five-year-old falsehood may be long in dying.
The Company has never sold goods abroad at less profit
than at home. Its foreign prices are based on the do
mestic price with proper adjustment to cover the cost of
export packing, freight, foreign duties, and difference in
selling expense. The foreign farmer thus necessarily
pays a higher price than the farmer at home; but the
Company s price structure is fair to both. Farmers all
over the world, the American farmer most of all, have
gained the benefit of mass production in American
factories.

American business men are honest, by and large ; and
American industry is true. Its captains are not prone to
build themselves marble mausoleums nor can they take
their gains with them into another world. But they can
bequeath their responsibilities to successors whom they
have trained to carry on their work to greater heights.
Thus they may live, and thus they may be known by
their fruits.

CHAPTER XI
RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION

THE several years succeeding 1918 were, in the main, a
period of recovery and reconstruction for the Interna
tional Harvester Company. It had weathered legal
storms in several States and then found itself really popu
lar with its customers. Farm opinion had been won, partly
by Harvester s honorable business conduct, mostly by a
growing recognition of the service which, in an ever more
definite way, it was performing for agriculture. The pe
riod from 1914 to, say, 1922 should have been one of better
business rising on the foundation of the Company s first
ten years. But the Great War brought losses, the period
of depression was fraught with misfortune, and compli
ance with the 1918 decree added many serious problems.
Actually, these years were a period when hope alternated
with dashed expectations and then new plans.

It will be remembered that the Company was com
pelled by the terms of the 1918 consent decree to sell the
Champion, Osborne, and Milwaukee lines of harvesting
machinery. The first two were immediately sold, Os
borne to the Emerson-Brantingham Company, of Rock-
ford (present-day successor of Manny, who fought such
stiff legal battles against the original Cyrus Hall Mc-
Cormick), and Champion to B. F. Avery, of Louisville.
The former enjoyed a nation-wide plow and tillage busi
ness and, in the heyday of the big tractor, had enjoyed a
successful threshing-machine trade. The other had an
entirely worth-while reputation in the South, and to a
certain extent in the Northwest as well, for its plows,
cultivators, and other small implements. Both felt their

1 86 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

positions would be strengthened by the addition of a de
veloped, established harvesting-machine line, and both
promised to be strong competitors.

Neither, however, wished to buy the Osborne or Cham
pion factories which the original decree required Har
vester to sell, as both already possessed ample manu
facturing capacity. So, with the consent of the Govern
ment, the Court permitted International to continue to
operate the two plants for other purposes. Champion
Works was renamed Springfield and converted to motor
truck production, and in its new guise came ultimately to
enjoy a prosperity it had never known before. A portion
of the Osborne establishment, now called Auburn Works,
was retained for its traditional cultivator and tillage pro
duction. In 1924, the Milwaukee line was sold to Moline,
a name famous throughout the world for plows. Both
Emerson-Brantingham and Moline had been in a strong
financial and trade position, but they were sadly hurt by
the depression of 1921, and, while both worked along for
quite a while, both have recently sold out to stronger
companies.

The single-dealer requirement was at first regarded by
the Company s management as nothing short of a calam
ity. Many thousand dealers had to be abandoned. Many
were long-standing associates whose experience began in
the old harvester days long before the consolidation.
The choice between two friends is usually an impossible
dilemma and such separation is too frequently the cause
of enmity. It was believed that many of the dealers cut
off to comply with the decree would either provide the
severest competition or would knife the Company for
having cast them away. Old McCormick and Deering
dealers by the hundreds were eliminated; yet, though
they could not have liked the situation, most of them

RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION 187

understood that the dictates of the law and not the
wishes of the Company were responsible. Where Har
vester had 21,800 dealers in 1917, but 13,860 of these
remained in 1919. Competitors testified in the second
Government suit that this narrowing of the International
sales outlet aided their own search for dealers and thus
increased their ability to compete for harvesting-machine
sales.

This was undoubtedly so, since no product, however
excellent, is merchantable unless it can be placed aggres
sively before the public. Harvester s own previous chan
nels of distribution were partially dammed and its sales
effort was crippled. The Company was placed in a situa
tion that affected none of its competitors, for they could,
if they wished, seek business relations with its dealers
while it was prohibited from contact with theirs. While
this fact undoubtedly caused Harvester salesmen to pur
sue every possible opportunity for trade more keenly, it
is also certain that it has been the cause of a smaller vol
ume of business than would otherwise have been secured.
But for the single-dealer limitation of the Court s decree.
Harvester s volume would be larger than it now is.

Nevertheless, as the years passed after 1918, it began
to be apparent that the provision of the Court s decree
limiting the Company to a single dealer in each com
munity would not prove to be so great a hindrance to
Harvester s future as had been feared. The double Mc-
Cormick and Deering lines of implements could not be
maintained in the United States with but one agent in a
community. Therefore, a composite type of grain binder
containing what were thought to be the best points of the
two old machines, called the McCormick-Deering, was
designed and introduced to the trade in 1923. The new
binder was immediately followed with other implements

188 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

which were either planned anew from the combined ad
vantages of the two lines or were selected bodily from the
old name groups as representing the best of the art; and
thus the present McCormick-Deering line came into be
ing. It, of course, included all types of farm operating
equipment, especially the various tractor models. The
salesmen liked it because it was complete and allowed
them to center their effort on one instead of a double line.

The advantage to farmers and to dealers of such a
procedure is easily apparent. Service was facilitated.
Each International dealer all over the length and breadth
of the land was able to stock, sell, and service all the
tractors, motor trucks, grain binders, harvester-threshers,
corn tools, and the many other items of the McCormick-
Deering line. Finally, and of possibly greater importance
for the future, the experimental effort required to work
out improvements was made easier and could be keener.
A man works best when he has undivided confidence in
the single task at hand.

An almost equally definitive result of the 1918 decree
was the addition of plows to the Company s business,
This matter had long been in the minds of the salesmen,
who had for years seen Deere, the original full-line com
pany, expanding into the harvesting-machine field.
Naturally they wished to take on plows. Therefore in
1919, after a survey of existing organizations, Interna
tional Harvester bought the Parlin and Orendorff Com
pany, third in size of the important plow factors in the
country. It will be remembered how the original Parlin
came to Canton, Illinois, in 1840, and how his business,
growing rapidly under the forward thrust of his energy,
was given a further impulse by the genius for sales of his
partner, OrendorfF. P & O, as the two men called their
company, soon added walking cultivators to its line, the

RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION 189

first corn lister, a sulky plow, and finally the gang plow.
Its large heavy engine gang of 1894 has been called one of
the first tractor plows. It made corn planters and cer
tain beet tools, Neither the first partners nor their sons
who succeeded them interested themselves at all in such
production methods as standardization or the elimina
tion of variety; for it is said that at the time of the
purchase by Harvester they were making over fourteen
hundred sizes and kinds of implements.

With the addition of plows and other correlated imple
ments, the International Harvester Company was for the
first time able to offer a complete line of machines to the
trade. Its full line, begun so soon after the formation of
the Company, was at last developed at least within
the scope of existing knowledge. This account of the in
vention of the reaper and what came out of it is not a
book of machinery; and yet it may be instructive to fol
low the cycle of a farmer s year and see what part in it the
machine descendants of the reaper can play.

If the farmer s lot is cast in the wheat belt, he can, if he
so desires, perform his every operation with Harvester
equipment. He can plow his land with whatever type of
instrument suits the condition of his soil, harrow it in any
known way, and pack his seed-bed to conserve the sub
surface moisture. He can drill his seed in close rows or
wide ones, and, if he be so minded, can cover a narrow
strip or one thirty feet wide, When his crop has ripened,
he can harvest it with a reaper or a horse-drawn binder or
with a wide header-harvester or a header-binder. Or he
can gather his crop with a combined harvester-thresher
prepared to deliver wheat in sacks or spout it into a tank.
If his farm lies in a moist district where the grain is too
wet at the time of harvest for threshing, and he can still
justify a large amount of fast work, he can use a tractor

igo THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

binder. Twine to tie his sheaves is Harvester-made and
so is his stationary threshing machine.

A corn-belt farmer can plow his land with implements
designed for row-crop agriculture. Then he can plant his
corn and cultivate it with whatever implement suits his
fancy or the fashion of his neighborhood. When harvest
time comes, he can bind it vertically or horizontally ac
cording to the length of the stalk ; or he can snap and husk
the ears and shred the stalks, or pick the ears from the
standing corn, and husk them one or two rows at a time.
Finally, he can fill his silo, cutting his ensilage in the field
or at his barn.

The grass farmer may plant alfalfa and mow, rake, ted,
load, and bale his hay. The cotton planter can plow as
he desires, plant, cultivate, and dust his crop but he
cannot, for the moment, pick his cotton mechanically. A
rice farmer can use a grain binder converted for use in
drenched fields. If the crop be potatoes, the farmer may
plant them, cultivate them, and then dig them; or if
beets, he can perform the various acts of planting and
cultivation.

Each of these farmers can use horses or tractors as he
pleases, and if his election should be for power farming,
he can choose such a tractor as will meet the number of
his acres or the type of his crop. He may haul any of his
produce to market in a wagon or in a motor truck. He
can grind feed for his stock or employ his winter hours in
spreading manure or distributing fertilizer over his land.
An engine will furnish such power as he needs. A cream
separator will be at home in his dairy. He can do all this
in any part of the world and all with International
Harvester machines.

This is in truth a full line of agricultural implements.
But the idea of a full line was not original with the

RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION 191

Harvester Company. Its own first impulse had been
rather to round out a cycle of production and distribution
than to be able to offer any specific full variety to its
customers. That thought came afterward, when the for
mer harvesting-machine men in the field began to gain
experience with the new implements they found them
selves handling, and discovered that in the new lines
there lay as great a chance for service to the farmer as in
their traditional binders and mowers.

The addition of plows to the product of the Company
added many new problems. As has been said, there is a
fundamental variation between machines which work
above the ground and those which dig beneath the sur
face. Osborne cultivators had given much education on
this matter which an intimate contact with plows com
pleted. It took the great army of Harvester Company
field experts, for example, several years before they mas
tered completely the initial intricacies of lining up a
plow for proper performance. Fortunately, they were
able to bring to bear on the problem their lifelong training
in service ideals. They stuck at it, and the ultimate solu
tion came when they were able to connect up the needs
of the plow with the known facts of the tractor, and to
guide both with a renewed Harvester-bred conception
of the service value of their work.

In 1919, Harvester also bought the Chattanooga Plow
Company in order to add to its full line a chilled iron
plow, a type much favored for certain difficult soil
conditions. The subsequent histories of P & O and of
Chattanooga plows follow parallel lines of development
and improvement. The demands of Harvester s custom
ers for equipment have, since the beginning of the in
dustry, stressed the importance of quality. As soon as
enough experience with plows had been gained to permit

I 9 2 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

of critical judgment, a determined effort was made to
bring the newly acquired implements up to Harvester
standards. But the manufacture of plows is an intricate
business, and automotive as well as implement produc
tion schemes had to be applied. Both plants were rebuilt
and reequipped, and, when their methods were secure,
they were renamed Canton Works and Chattanooga
Works and their product was called McCormick-Deering.
All this while Harvester salesmen were acquiring plow
knowledge, just as their forefathers had become skilled
with the development of harvesting machinery. The prog
ress of power farming, in itself a story so broad that it
must be given separate treatment, helped ; but it was at
least 1925 before International s plow business had grown
sufficiently to rival that of the other leaders.

It is really remarkable that the men of the Harvester
Company were able to accomplish so much with plows in
a few short years. They were not laboring under any
threat of annihilation if they did not succeed, for even
without the plow line the business was large. They were
not trying to fill half-empty factories or territorial ware
houses. The influences which led them so quickly to plow
success were positive rather than negative. These were a
recognition of the vital importance of plows to the fuller
development of the practice of power farming ; a desire to
stand in the constructive position of being able to supply
every machine need of agriculture ; and an ingrained, in
herited impulse to do anything that would the better
serve the farmer. Such motives were not different from
those which had led Harvester men willingly into the un
trodden paths of the new lines.

It is well that the men who were making and selling
farm equipment in the last decade of the century of the
reaper had ideals and courage similar to those of their

RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION 193

ancestors. They had lost the original binder and har
vester supremacy they inherited at the time of the con
solidation, just as Cyrus Hall McCormick had lost his
supposed benefit of patent protection. But as he had
been able to face his rivals and defeat them by means of
his commercial sagacity, so their fostering of tractors and
the other new-line machines allowed them to replace
the vanishing traditional business. They were able to
face stiffening competition by the intellectual vigor of
their business ability.

Harvester s post-war competitors were to prove in
creasingly able. Massey-Harris of Canada had been
the chief rival throughout the world. It purchased an
American harvesting-machine plant to permit it to man
ufacture in this country, and an American tractor to
gether with its factory. The John Deere Plow Company
has been the chief competitor in the United States, where
its full line of farm operating equipment is made and
widely sold. The J. I. Case Threshing Machine Company
business flourished, based on its traditional threshers, on
its quick grasp of the opportunity offered by Harvester s
pioneering work in small combines, and on the ready wit
with which it had first abandoned steam tractors and
then kept abreast of internal combustion tractor design.
With the acquisition of Emerson-Brantingham, it joined
Deere and International as a full-line farm equipment
company.

Deere was late in entering the tractor game, but by
waiting until 1919, it missed the shocks of the war which,
with the succeeding depression, wrecked such a tragic
number of the smaller tractor companies. When it did so,
its wide sales outlet and historic ability gave it a place
next to Harvester. Oliver, on the other hand, refused
to build a tractor; and so, as soon as the tractor became

I 9 4 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

the hub around which the whole agricultural implement
industry revolved, its business could not follow the rise
of power farming. It was, however, destined to become
the leading member of another full-line consolidation,
the Oliver Farm Equipment Company, in which Hart-
Parr furnished the tractor. Moline grounded on the
shoals of 1921, got a fresh start and flourished for a
period, found itself in difficulties again, and has lately
been absorbed by a fifth full-line organization, the Min-
neapolis-Moline Power Implement Company.

Companies have risen because the agricultural imple
ment business furnishes an inspiring challenge to men who
want to leave their mark on life; companies have fallen
because they have been unable to subsist on abstract re
wards and because there are so many barriers on the road
to success. There are extended credits, expensive service,
constant change and development of machines, and the
peaks and valleys of farm prosperity with which to deal.
Of course there are also financial profits as well as satis
faction to seek, for the modern world is usually generous
with those who render it a service. They are directly
proportionate to the profitableness of agriculture itself.
If farmers are prosperous, they will buy a truism which
the implement maker knows and which it might serve
other city dwellers to remember who have goods to sell
and who sometimes seem to underrate the relative im
portance of farm prosperity.

From the beginning the Harvester Company was never
free from competition, nor, I think, should it have wished
to be. Men develop most finely when they are spurred on
by the personal competition of other men. A government
rules best when the administration has to face the
constructive criticism of a strong opposition. Business
cannot be static: it is either growth or decay. The har-

RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION 195

vester war of the Eighteen-Nineties was cruel, disastrous
to the weaker combatants, and yet it was inspiring in the
way its testing brought out the finer qualities of men.
But in the first twenty International years, competition
had perhaps become routine. Henry Ford s presence in
the implement province and the new type of competition
he soon introduced returned the industry for a time to the
atmosphere of battle. War hurts, but its searing occasion
ally furnishes an urge to continued growth.

In 1918, when he sold his first tractors in the United
States and Canada, Ford distributed them through Gov
ernment agencies as a war measure. To have convinced
worried statesmen and the public that the tractor was
a new device twelve years after many tractor builders
had attained large production, and that his particular
make would prove to be the one solution of the knotty
problem of food production, was a supreme feat of sales
manship. To win the news columns of the metropolitan
press for a discussion of how the magic name of Ford
had, at a stroke, provided an answer to a supposedly
unrecognized demand for farm power, was magnificent
advertising. Whatever Ford did was deemed to be for the
real benefit of the public; and wherever he led, consumers
followed. It is therefore not surprising that his tractor
business increased by leaps and bounds.

It is questionable if the business of making tractors
would so soon have become a large-scale industry had it
not been for Ford. He taught the manufacturing world
how to combine large volume with the low-cost produc
tion methods of the automobile world. In 1918, the
manufacturing methods employed by all tractor produc
ers were derived from implement and not automotive
standards, and they were hardly up to date in terms of
manufacturing progress. The record annual production

196 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

of four thousand Mogul 8-i6 s in 1915 had been non-
progressively assembled; and at a period in its early
existence the flywheel of the Titan 10-20 traveled exactly
one mile around the factory (as compared with a subse
quent three hundred feet) before it was mounted in the
tractor. Some few of Harvester s factory men realized
what waste there was in such methods. The production
cost of a grain binder was surprisingly low, but it was a
type of manufacture which required relatively little
machining; and when the production methods which so
cheaply produced so many implements were applied to
tractors, they fell short.

During 1918 there were 133,000 tractors made in the
United States. Ford had already usurped Harvester s
leadership, International was second, and Case third.
The expected drop in the war-time demand did not
eventuate, and production mounted rapidly to the as
tonishing total of 203,000 machines in 1920. By this
time Ford was far in the lead and was making several
times as many as Harvester, For the next year or two,
three-quarters of all tractors made were Fordsons. Dur
ing the period of depression, sales fell off to a quarter, in
ventories of materials and unsold tractors were huge and
high-priced, and the prospects were gloomy. Then, early
in 1922, Henry Ford cut the price of tractors.

That February morning is another of the many busi
ness hours I treasure in my memory. I had taken Mr.
Legge, the Company s beloved and hard-boiled general
manager, on a visit to the new motor-truck installation
at Springfield Works. As we were arguing some problem
which then seemed to be important, the telephone rang
Chicago wished to speak to Mr. Legge. We could, of
course, hear only his side of the conversation. There was
much talk from the other end, and then an explosion

EARLY TYPES OF LIGHT TRACTORS
MOGUL 8-16 AND TITAN IO-20

RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION 197

from Alex: What? What s that? How much? Two
hundred and thirty dollars? Well, Til be... What ll we
do about it? Do? Why, damn it all meet him, of
course! We re going to stay in the tractor business- Yes f
cut two hundred and thirty dollars. Both models yes,
both. And say, listen, make it good! We ll throw in a
plow as well!*

The meaning of this reduction in the price was that
Ford had determined to lose money in order to increase
his production. International s reply was to express a
similar (but forced) determination to meet his competi
tion by selling at less than cost rather than to lose its
place in the business it had been pioneering. It would be
fruitless to rehearse the detailed story of the long tractor
war. Harvester was waging the battle of the implement
industry against mighty Henry Ford and the automobile.
Ford was backed by the most popular commercial name
of the time and the uncounted millions earned for him by
his epoch-making car; and he was trying to capture a
business with which he had had no previous contact.
International had on its side many years of training
gained from contact with farmers, less capital by far y
and utter inexperience with defeat. Doubtless Ford had
no overt desire to attack Harvester; for, as he said later,
he was simply trying to find out how low the price might
be at which farmers would buy tractors in quantities
equivalent to automobiles. It is possible that he had over
estimated the tractor market. There are over six million
farms in the United States, but they cannot all of them
employ tractors to advantage. Nevertheless, he sincerely
thought that he had it in his power to make a constructive
contribution to the cause of agriculture.

The salient change devised by Ford for the tractor in
dustry concerned itself with the method of selling. Start-

198 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

ing with the initial advantage of a low price, he cut it to
a level at which he readily admitted he would lose money.
But he overran his object when he gave his tractor to
his car dealers to sell. The farm tractor did not originate
from the automobile; it is really a member of the imple
ment, not of the motor-car, family. Ford dealers in the
country were well acquainted with their customers, but
not with their farm needs; and Ford dealers in the cities
had no sales outlet for farm goods. Recognizing these
truths, Ford provided an industrial model of his tractor
for the city trade, and made arrangements for a line of
agricultural implements to meet the supposed sales needs
of his rural agencies. This he did by inviting certain
companies to manufacture new and light types of farm
machinery specially designed to accompany his tractor.
But Ford s preparations for the provision of agricultural
machinery were to prove inadequate and his mistake in
this direction was one of the main reasons for his sub
sequent retirement, for several years at least, from
the tractor business. The implements were generally
planned to correspond with the size of the tractor, not
for the work they had to perform. They were engineering
marvels, easily manufactured and cheap to build but
they did not possess the ruggedness which ninety years
of experience with agricultural equipment had shown to
be necessary. Then, too, the Ford tractor itself, though
it had been designed by the finest automobile brains
in the world and built by the best manufacturing
system in existence, was deficient from a farm point of
view. It was too light to gain the traction necessary to
pull the desired fourteen-inch plows. It lacked power
to function in those supposedly unusual circumstances
which, because of hostile Providence or the unevenness
of soils, a farmer meets at least once in every round of his

RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION 199

field. The Fordson was a perfect theoretical answer to an
imperfect practical problem. It would operate success
fully in so many conditions that huge numbers were sold ;
but it failed in so many places that ultimately farmers
would have no more of it.

Harvester s answer to the Fordson attack could be
made only with the old two-cylinder Titan 10-20, which
even then was ready for replacement with a modern
model, and the four-cylinder International 8-16. Under
the terms of combat set by Ford and met by Legge, their
prices were reduced to $700 and $670. A suitable tractor
plow or other implement was given away with each sale.
Even so, compared to Ford s price of $395, the appar
ent advantage was all with the champion of automobile
methods.

A Harvester challenge rang through the land. Every
where any single Ford sale was rumored, the Harvester
dealer dared the Ford representative to a contest. No
prizes were offered, no jury awarded merit to one or an
other contestant. No quarter was given and none was
asked. Grimly the protagonists struggled, fiercely they
battled for each sale. The reaper war was being refought
with modern weapons. Supremacy in the tractor field
was at stake. During the next three years there were
literally thousands of these contests, and in the end
Harvester won farmers back from price to its own version
of quality and proved its right to survive in the tractor
field. It demonstrated unequivocally that more stamina
than the Fordson possessed was needed in a tractor.

The Company won many tractor trials, but its losses
were large. Obviously the cut price was to meet the com
petition of Ford s policy of selling at less than cost and
bore not the slightest relation to production costs or
value. Under the influence of a tremendous sales cam-

200 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

paign, the surplus inventory of tractors melted away.
Two improved new models, the McCormick-Deering
10-20 and 15-30, were introduced which summed up the
entire story of Harvester s tractor experience. Millions of
dollars were poured into the modern type of labor-saving
manufacturing equipment. Production costs were slashed
by the means of efficiency gained through elimination of
waste effort. In 1924, Harvester s tractor sales increased
as the continued pressure of the many field contests be
gan to tell. In even greater numbers farmers were coming
to realize that their field requirements could not be met
with less quality than the high standards Harvester was
building into its machines. In 1927, the number of Mc
Cormick-Deering tractors sold passed the agricultural
portion of Fordson sales. In 1928, when Ford s industrial
tractor volume could no longer alone support his busi
ness, he ceased tractor production altogether.

I do not pretend that the so-called tractor war was as
vital a matter for Mr. Ford as it was for the International
Harvester Company. During these same years his motor
car sales were annually exceeding the million mark. How
ever much the problem of farm power appealed to his
personal interest, tractors necessarily had to be a second
ary consideration with him. But they were the pivot of
Harvester s entire business. The Company was fighting
for its traditional position of leadership in the agricultural
equipment world.

Where Harvester s plight had been uncertain in 1922,
its situation in the end was one of triumph. It had proved
to the world that a farm tractor should be sold as a part
of a farm equipment line and should not become the
minor brother of an automobile. It had taught itself how
to design a better tractor than any hitherto known, and
how to build it in terms of the highest art of production.

RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION 201

Ford had convinced thousands of horse-using farmers
that in the tractor they could find the answer to their
power needs. International proved to them that to do
their work they must have a superior machine. When the
tractor war was over, the farmers of the world appreciated
beyond a shadow of doubt that they would best serve
themselves by providing their farms with a tractor rugged
enough to resist the shocks of farm use and powerful
enough to do all of their work. They knew that there
can be no such thing as a good cheap tractor.

It can be readily understood that the fighting spirit
developed during the years of the tractor war, like the
vigor generated by the battles of the harvester war, had
a beneficial effect on every other portion of the Com
pany s business. Nowhere was this more apparent than in
foreign countries, where the battles had raged as fiercely
as in the fields of Ohio or on the prairies of Kansas.
Harvester was recovering as strikingly abroad as it was
at home from the losses of the Great War and the depres
sion. Standing alone, the facts of business may seem but
a trite recital of mundane circumstances; but perhaps
they become clothed with romance when imagination is
allowed to picture their background. The tale of the ex
ploration into the agricultural needs of far lands is not a
part of this particular phase of recovery from incipient
calamity, and I refer to it here merely because the power
that accomplished it followed so logically as a result of the
spirit of victory engendered by the tractor war. An en
largement of the domestic business resulted from exactly
the same causes; but any detailed account of it must also
be a subsequent part of this story of Harvester progress.

The miscellaneous items of the Company s business,
such as steel and fiber, remained fairly constant, and the
sale of binder twine and the old-line machines did not

202 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

increase. But the new-line implement trade flourished as
did the volume of repairs, which are the measure of the
Company s increasing ability to render service. Tractor
sales rose spectacularly from the low point of the war
with Ford. Motor trucks also enjoyed a steady increase.
The automotive lines constitute a full half of Harvester s
volume.

I cannot refrain from mentioning here one motor
truck incident of 1921 which indicates that, however
much a renewed spirit of determination was kindled by
the tractor war, it had by no means died out before that
event. Really, Ford s attack gave a new and stronger
purpose to a great and by no means obsolete ability.

The depression of 1921 found Springfield Works carry
ing a large inventory of purchased motors, transmissions,
axles, and other motor-truck parts. In accordance with
another of Legge s brilliant schemes to start business
going again, these parts were assembled and sold to the
Company s own dealers at a considerably reduced figure.
The plan was to use them in a great canvassing effort
designed to start trade going. They were painted a bright
red, and were, to say the least, spectacular as they dashed
across the countryside carrying goods to farmers which
farmers would not come to town to seek. They could not
fail to bring home to agriculturists the message that
Harvester was confident of their future and its own.
Some friendly wag coined for these crimson messengers
of prosperity the homely but expressive name Red
Babies. They did their work and even to-day a farm
implement dealer s delivery truck, whatever its make or
whatever his allegiance, is called a Red Baby in many
sections of the country.

Perhaps the moral of the Red Baby story is that usual
business methods will not suit unusual circumstances.

RECOVERY AND RECONSTRUCTION 203

The Great War and the worst depression in all com
mercial history could not be faced except with courage
and extraordinary will to do and an illogical and superb
confidence in the real nature of the veiled future. Suc
cessive attacks of the law officers of State and Federal
Governments were met with the cleanest record ever
made before the public by any corporation and by the
whole-hearted favor of the customers whose interests
those officers were supposed to represent. Tractor com
petition of a more serious nature than was ever known in
the harvester wars of former days was turned by changed
manufacturing methods and the reiterated proof of supe
rior value. All in all, Harvester was demonstrating to
the world that it had a constructive interest in the prob
lems of the farmer, as well as the business acumen and
the militant spirit necessary to fight its own battles.

CHAPTER XII
POWER FARMING

THE reaper was the first of the implements by which
mechanized power was brought to the aid of agriculture.
It appeared suddenly before an unexpectant world.
Twenty years after its birth, it had become a proved
mechanism, and in thirty years its purpose had been ac
cepted everywhere and its usefulness was hailed by farm
ers and by statesmen. Then, one by one, its progeny
began to appear upon the scene: the self -rake reaper, the
harvester, the wire binder, and the twine binder. Dur
ing the same interval human ingenuity, thus focused on
the unfolding solution of the demands of mechanized
agriculture, had produced the steel plow and its many
descendants along a collateral line of kinship. The reaper
was not their father it was the first expression of the
thought which originated them. It was an intellectually
inspired reply to a want which men had long felt, but had
not known how to satisfy a reply which, when it re
duced theory to practice, gave other men the mechanistic
clue to other problems.

Up to the advent of the reaper, the peak load of the
agricultural cycle was in the harvest. It was always
easier, with the bounty of Nature and even with the
crudest of tillage implements, to make a crop than to
gather it. McCormick s invention, replacing the sickle,
the scythe, and the cradle with a competent machine,
shifted the incidence of time and labor to the turning of
the soil. When the invention of the modern plow solved
that problem, the peak load of farm labor rested on thresh
ing. The early horse-power thresher then became as

POWER FARMING 205

inadequate for its share of crop production as the primi
tive plow had proved in the presence of the reaper.
Quickly, therefore, inventive genius gave its attention to
this final phase of crop production and evolved more and
more efficient types of stationary steam-power threshers.
Perhaps if this process of development were searchingly
analyzed, it would be made clear that the solution of one
mechanical farm problem inevitably makes necessary the
solution of other related needs; and therein lies the reason
for the steady progress that the farm implement industry
has made since McCormick opened the door to mech
anized agriculture.

Within sixty years after the reaper s birth, thinkers
began to ask themselves why machinery, already so
adequate a substitute for the arms of men, could not be
similarly applied to those tasks which were beyond the
power of all muscular physique* They seized upon the
principle of internal combustion, added it to the stock
in trade of implement practice and produced the tractor.
This was a vehicle, an element in the widening scheme
of transportation, but a power plant mightier than the
animal power which farmers had summoned to drag the
machines that were the source of their own liberation.
Thus, by the time of the reaper s eightieth birthday, its
progeny, multiplied now by the succeeding generations
of its fruitfulness, were growing in stature as well as in
number. Machines were becoming more purposeful.

A century ago, one man with a hoe and a scythe could
bend his back and tend one farm acre, or, at a stretch, a
two-acre patch of land. Now, with the help of those
artifacts which we, masters of a material destiny, sum up
in the term efficiency/ he can single-handed accomplish
at least a hundred acres of production. But farm power
is no longer a mere substitute for the farmer s beasts of

206 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

burden. It has enjoyed its own transition and has become
power farming. This latter stage of development became
visible by the time of the reaper s ninetieth year. As
soon as the tractor could be reduced in size and cost, it
became useful to the many instead of the few. A further
expression of man s wants arose out of the previous
answers to his quest. Why not apply the power directly
to the work and let it function positively in its own way,
to do the work both of the animal and the man? Search
precedes science; and the final application of mechanical
power to farm needs appeared when power was made an
integral, rather than an incidental, part of the farm opera-
tion. Power farming, new in itself but still the latest child
of the reaper, does just that.

Perhaps Cyrus Hall McCormick knew in 1831 only
that he had made farm work easier and had thus per
mitted the production of more food. Three-quarters of
the population of the Western world lived by agriculture
in 1831, whereas less than one-quarter supply our present
cry for bread. Undoubtedly in future years a still smaller
relative number of producers will suffice. It seems rea
sonable to guess that, if power continues to march with
progress, we may learn to be even more worthy of what
the past has done. Perhaps power will give us, even more
than now, material ascendancy over those problems which
our fathers feared but faced.

Figures prepared by the United States Department of
Agriculture show that in 1918 and 1919 there were about
26,400,000 horses, mules, and other draft animals on
American farms. These dates mark the high point of
animal power as applied to agriculture. They also coincide
with the war-time rush to tractor power which marked the
initial decline of the horse. It is not suggested that before
then animals had not served their purpose. They had

POWER FARMING 207

drawn the reaper and its progeny across the farms of the
East and over the prairies, but their maximum contribu
tion could be rendered only during the comparatively
brief periods when farmers were preparing for harvest
and were harvesting. During the other many months a
farmer naturally had to feed his beasts or allow them
to graze on land that must otherwise be unproductive.
Also, horses could not be speeded beyond a certain point ;
they wilted under the summer heat of the Western wheat
and corn climate; they tired just as man had tired be
fore 183 1 and they were admittedly an expensive power
plant.

The Department says that in 1924, when tractors were
already beginning to be effective, America s farmers
annually employed a total of sixteen billion horse-power
hours at a cost of three billion dollars a year. Five-sixths
of this amount was paid out to keep the animal power
plant in operation. Farm labor, too, was staggering in
its demands upon farm income. Sixty per cent of what
agriculture spends on farm operation must go for power
and for labor. If the tractor satisfies farm power needs,
it is also obvious that human labor is needed in inverse
ratio to the supply of mechanical power. Animal power
endeavored to maintain pace with the demands of farm
ing, but it could do so no longer after 1919. In 1931, with
progress still marching on into the reaper s second century,
the farms of our country are, on an average, using 3,500,-
ooo horse-power more each year than they could or would
employ before the infant appearance of the tractor.
Without horse-drawn implements there would once have
been an insufficiency of farm production. Without the
tractor there could have been no increment to the farmer s
ability to serve the world.

I do not pretend that there do not remain in the forum

208 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

of agricultural discussion men who dispute the claim of
tractor farmers that it is cheaper to farm with a tractor
than with horses. They declare that the price of horses
and mules, as well as of feed to keep them, is low. But
one thousand dollars invested in a tractor will provide
more power for ordinary work and for the peak loads
than an equivalent value of horseflesh ; the tractor eats
only when it works; and the housing of a tractor (too
frequently in the open air) costs less than a barn. -j It
would be possible to amass statistics by the page to prove
these statements. Suffice it to say that the Department
of Agriculture estimates that a tractor drawbar horse
power can be developed for half the cost of an animal
horse-power. But argument is no longer necessary the
modern farmer knows. In 1929 there were only 19,000,-
ooo animals employed in agriculture as compared to
26,400,000 in 1919. Then there were less than 150,000
tractors in use, while to-day there are nearly a million.

It seems probable that this generation is wisely allow
ing the matter of the cost of production to determine the
answer to the problem of farm power. During the last
decade of the reaper century, farmers also discovered
that a tractor would pull their implements and cultivate
their land regardless of the season; that it would work
faster than their teams and permit them to use heavier
implements; and that it would not tire under the blaze
of a prairie sun or would, if they so wished, work as faith
fully through the night as through the day. But now this
latest machine in the train of the reaper has in its turn
affected the reaper s previous heirs. It has forged ahead,
step for step, in the endless race of progress and has pro
duced a new line of farm equipment that matches the
tractor itself in cost reducing efficiency. The passing of
the horses has been good for the farmer s pocketbook.

TRACTOR BINDER, A ONE-MAN HARVESTING OUTFIT OPERATING
WITH POWER TAKE-OFF

STANDARD PRESENT-DAY TYPE OF TWO-PLOW TRACTOR, HERE
USED IN THRESHING

POWER FARMING 209

To-day he can plow for $i .25 per acre instead of $6.50 ; he
harvests and threshes grain for 20 cents less per bushel
with the combine than with the most efficient twine
binder and stationary thresher. These are the power-
farming methods of the new age of agriculture.

The device which marked the definite step from the
mere drawbar and belt use of internal combustion in farm
tasks to the present stage of power farming is called the
power take-off/ This is a small attachment, first pio
neered by the Harvester Company and now built into
practically every tractor on the market, designed to ef
fect direct transmission of power from the tractor to the
implement. Nearly all farm machines, except the mold-
board type of plow, the cultivator, and a few other till
age implements, have moving parts which function as the
implement moves along. As long as farmers were con
tent to have the tractor do no more than replace the
team and draw the machine, these moving parts were
actuated by ground traction through the forward move
ment of the machine. Mechanically, this is a roundabout
method of power transmission which occasions power
losses. With direct transmission through the power take
off to the operating mechanism, the loss of power is
minimized, and, since the main wheel does no more than
carry the weight of the machine, the implement has to
resist fewer strains and can be lighter, more compact, and
less expensive.

The second and latest step in the introduction of true
power farming has been the development of the Farmall
or all-purpose tractor. Both these epochal ideas were
matured by the engineering staff of the International
Harvester Company, where now resides the counterpart
of that mental energy which gave the reaper to the
world. The real credit for their full fruition belongs to

210 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

collective thought rather than to individual genius. A
business organism is as complex as life itself. Engineering
specialists can improve a theory by bringing to bear on it
particular knowledge of methods or materials. Factory
men know how to achieve the desired result by more
direct and therefore less expensive methods. Salesmen
can refine or state more clearly the objective. Executives
have learned to seek out for themselves the far corners of
world experience and base their criticism on observation.
The mechanical skill of farmers broadens as they use the
tools industry makes for them. All collaborate to achieve
the single end of cheaper agricultural production.

When the present all-purpose tractor was first proposed
fifteen years ago, it was intended to do no more than
supply a power plant to the row-crop farmer whose corn
and cotton problems refused to yield to the standard
type of low-hung machine. If the man who had to till the
soil of the corn or cotton belts could be supplied with a
tractor high enough to ride over the top of his growing
crops, and with wheels so spaced that they would travel
between the rows, it would be easy to pull behind it a
cultivator designed for horses. As the all-purpose tractor
developed, it became apparent that any such analysis
bore on but the small part of the problem. Thus, as the
tractor took form through its experimental years, it was
found that a multiple-row cultivator, designed to with
stand the comparatively mild tractive effort of animals,
was not stout enough to face the steady, purposeful pull
of an engine. It was also discovered that better field
work could be done if the cultivator gangs were placed
ahead of the operator, where he could watch their per
formance, than if they were dragged behind him. Lastly,
it began to be apparent that the tractor designed orig
inally for row-crop cultivation was suitable for, or adapt-

POWER FARMING 211

able to, many other tasks indeed, to all the lighter
work on the farm.

An all-purpose tractor of any make others than
Harvester s pioneer product appeared in 1929 and 1930
must necessarily be high ; therefore, it has to be light
in order not to be top-heavy. As a matter of fact, tractors
have been growing lighter through the years, and the
most modern models weigh not over 156 pounds per
developed horse-power as compared to over 500 pounds
for the mammoths of the days of the Winnipeg tests.
This trend has been furthered both by refinement in de
sign and by improved wheel-lug equipment which more
effectively gears the tractor to the earth. A tractor has
to drag heavy, resisting loads and any wheel slippage is
absolute loss ; therefore, weight cannot be reduced beyond
a certain point. A standard tractor must be heavy enough
to do its work. An all-purpose tractor must be heavy
enough in front to avoid tipping over and yet light enough
to allow the navigability which row-crop cultivation
demands. It must also possess a much shorter turning
radius than is practicable for a standard tractor.

It may be assumed that there will always be much
room in the field of power farming for the standard type
of tractor. The crawler type is best for such work as
excavating and for certain agricultural conditions special
enough to justify its additional expense. The all-purpose
tractor will plow, pull harvesting and other implements,
and do belt work within the limits of the lower power
occasioned by the light weight of a machine designed
for the cultivating of standing crops. The standard
type of tractor, whose principal aim is simply to furnish
power either by its own tractive effort or by the power
take-off or by the belt, will continue to find an important
place in performing the heaviest tasks of farming. The

212 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

large harvester-thresher favored by the Argentine rancher
demands the most rugged type of tractor, as does the
system of plowing employed in Canada and the American
Northwest. As a matter of fact, many farmers have found
it to their advantage to use both an all-purpose and a
standard tractor in their work.

The harvester-thresher is the most spectacular of the
instruments of power farming. An early machine of this
type was introduced to serve the dry wheat districts of
California and the hilly benches of the Pacific Northwest.
It was a monster, made after the fashion of threshing
machines, principally of wood and pulled by as many as
thirty-six horses. Publications in the East were accus
tomed to print picturesque photographs of the huge
mechanism and its long train of straining horses laboring
along a wheat-sheathed hillside rising up to a crown of
pines. This, the urban editors thought, was expressive
of the bigness of the West ; and uninstructed people used
to wonder how small farms could compete with the mas
ters of such a mechanical marvel. But the large combine,
like the large tractor, was to pass into the discard before
lighter, less expensive, more serviceable equipment. The
empirical science of farm implement experimentation is
not satisfied until it can discover how those things that
are useful to the largest farmers can also be made to
serve the many.

The pioneer light harvester-thresher, a product of the
International Harvester Company s growing policy of
serving all farmers in all their equipment needs, was in
troduced in 1914. Its purpose was to harvest grain in any
district where the moisture content at harvest time was
sufficiently low to permit threshing at the moment of
cutting. Obviously any small machine can be cheaper
than one of several times its size. By its use the farmers

POWER FARMING 213

of the semi-arid prairie States were immediately enabled
to accomplish the same savings in wheat production
cost as the land barons of the Pacific Coast. But com
bining was such a radically different method that for sev
eral years they were loath to give over the time-honored
methods. Also, as is invariably the case, the first machines
could not have the benefit of years of study built into
them. Finally, Harvester and its competitors had to com
bat the arguments of the millers, who claimed that grain
harvested with the combine was still too full of natural
moisture; and of the adherents of stationary threshing,
who claimed that the new device wasted grain. But every
objection was groundless. A harvester-thresher does not
waste grain. As it travels through the wheat, the bat
tered straw is blown out at the rear and any grain not
properly separated is ejected with it upon the ground,
where a searcher can find it. A stationary thresher s
unseparated grain is blown with the chaff upon the straw
pile, where, however much of it there may be, it is con
cealed in a growing monument of refuse. The facts of
time and experience answered the objection that com
bined wheat was moist wheat. Then, as the years passed,
the technical skill of designers and builders improved;
and by the time tractors had become widely used, the
harvester-thresher was able to take its place beside the
binder as a fully developed machine. As its use broad
ened, the quantities sold increased the mass-production
methods of manufacturing brought the cost down. By
1927, a very considerable, if not the largest, part of the
wheat grown in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska,
Colorado, California, the far Northwestern States, and
in Argentina was harvested with combines.

Before the day of the tractor a farmer gathered in his
grain with binders, header-binders, or headers. Ever an

214 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

efficient worker, he harvested by the best methods he
knew. But by previous means he could do no more than
gather his cut and bound wheat into shocks, whence it
must be subsequently collected and hauled to the sta
tionary threshing machine; or, when it was cut by a
header, deliver it into a prepared stack. Always, until the
advent of the combine, there was the separate operation
of threshing to face.

t The Department of Agriculture estimated in 1928 that,
as compared with the binder, the harvester-thresher
method of harvesting saved eighteen cents a bushel, in
cluding interest and depreciation on the more expensive
machinery involved, and twelve cents as compared with
a header. These figures are important if you consider
the production of three hundred acres of twenty-bushel
wheat; and they are ultra-conservative. Most farmers
claim a direct saving of twenty cents a bushel for the
combine. Furthermore, losses from grain knocked out of
the head by the older method of harvesting and threshing
are reduced by more than half. The combine also devours
as much acreage in a day as the fastest tractor binder
and, in the same space of time, completes every harvest
operation. At one sweep the grain is cut, threshed, and
cleaned, all without the necessity of hiring extra labor.

It is no more than a short fifteen years since I lived in
southern Kansas and was reasonably familiar with condi
tions attending the harvest season there and in Okla
homa. Each morning as the end of June approached, we
would read in the papers how the advancing horde of
farm laborers was descending from the East upon our
vicinity. Farm wives and daughters prepared huge
tables and nerved themselves for hot hours of cooking for
a swarm of hungry men ; and they warned one another to
be prepared to stay safe indoors at night. Farm men

PICK-UP DEVICE ATTACHED TO A HARVESTER-THRESHER IN
A WESTERN CANADA WHEAT-FIELD

!1 : /

THE HARVESTER-THRESHER IN THE ARGENTINE

POWER FARMING 215

anxiously consulted their local bankers for temporary
loans to pay this labor. When the foreign army arrived,
riding the rods or preempting the roofs of an inbound
freight, it might be prepared to work or it might not.
There were groups of college boys off for a summer s
spree, willing enough, but unskilled at handling countless
bundles of heavy wheat into a shock, unused to breathing
threshing dust for day on day. There were swarms of
tramps attracted by the unsupervised nature of harvest
work and the promise of pay plus country food. These
the sheriff rounded up sooner or later, commandeered a
passing freight, and, by dint of posse control, passed the
pest along to another community. There were experi
enced harvest hands who followed the season from south
to north, and, because they knew their jobs, commanded
the full measure of their wage. Threshing succeeded
cutting, and the motley harvest army would be followed
by the professional soldiery of the threshing-machine
crews. They, too, are gone now, swept away with the rest
of the labor problem. The combine and the farmer s own
will to work are sufficient for a grain-grower s harvest.

To-day, harvest means no more than longer days than
usual for a farmer and his family. As the sun mounts in
the white sky of a Western morning, the dew vanishes
and his fields are soon dry enough for threshing. A twist
of the starter crank and the tractor hums. Fifteen-year-
old daughter, clad in overalls, with a wide-brimmed hat
pulled down over her clipped locks and with her set little
face masked with dust, rules the iron horse; her younger
brother sits nonchalantly in the shade of the cab of a
waiting motor truck; and father attends to the nice de
tails of regulating the height of the cutter bar. Ever and
anon he climbs to the roof of the clattering harvester-
thresher to examine the sample* of the grain, and then,

2i6 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

if it is not clean enough, he descends to adjust the wind*
which blows the chaff and weed seeds out of the threshed
wheat. Acre after acre the machine devours, thirty or
forty before evening if the field is large enough ; and when
night comes, it is ready to move to the next field and do
its work over again. As yet the combine has not learned
to take mother s place as a home-maker; but she no
longer has to labor through the night as well, in order
that an imported army of harvest hands may eat. The
harvester-thresher and the tractor, mightiest of the tools
of power farming, have done as much for her, it seems, as
for any other.

It should be remembered that the combine method of
harvesting was developed for the dry-farming districts.
If wheat contains more than fourteen per cent of moisture
by weight, it cannot safely be binned. It will sweat/ and
its grade, or quality, will be depreciated by the elevator
man or the miller who will ultimately buy it. This
moisture can be external, caused by rain or dew or the
evaporation of a muddy field, or it can be internal, like
the sap of a tree. Externally induced moisture seldom
harms a crop and dries quickly. I have even seen Cana
dian wheat combined in the spring after it has lain all
winter under the snow. Where the sun burns, as it does
from West Texas to Montana, the internal moisture is
unimportant. In Kansas, hail rather than rain is the
enemy to be feared. But east of the Mississippi River,
the climate has until recently been thought too humid for
the harvester-thresher. There, it has been said, grain
must be placed in the shock to dry before it can be
threshed. Again, though, implement experimentation is
coming to the aid of striving, efficient, improving agri
culture.

When wheat at harvest time contains more than the

POWER FARMING 217

absolute maximum of moisture, it has been found that it
will dry as well in a windrow as in a shock. The windrow-
ing machine is a wide harvester equipped simply with a
platform canvas and a reel. It deposits the cut grain on
top of the stubble in a long windrow, where it lies safely
for three days or three weeks, until it is sufficiently dry.
Rain or other external moisture does not harm it, hail
does not knock it out of the prone heads. Then along
comes the harvester-thresher, a small model cut to suit
the smaller size of Eastern farms or one huge enough to
meet the larger demands of Northwestern agriculture.
Now it is equipped, not with a cutter bar and a reel to do
its own reaping, but with a rotating device mounted in
front of the platform canvas. This device picks up the
ribbon of grain from the stubble and deposits it on the
canvas; and then combining proceeds as usual.

This plan, called the windrow method of harvesting, is
one of the few schemes known to the mechanical world
where two operations are accomplished practically as
cheaply as one. The sole added cost over combining is
the fuel and overhead consumed in the simple, brief oper
ation of windrowing, and against this there is an offset.
Windrow harvesting effects a considerable saving of
grain even as compared with the straight combining
process. Indeed, many farmers in the dryer districts have
accepted this practice to gain the benefit of the almost
complete insurance it provides against hail or other in
clemency of weather or insect depredations, and because
of its advantage in handling weedy grain. In Canada and
parts of the Northwest, where rains are frequent, it is
the only possible method by which the wheat-grower can
secure the lower production cost permitted by the har
vester-thresher and at the same time avoid having his
wheat graded down because of surplus moisture.

2i8 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

The harvester-thresher is the reaper s latest descendant
in the direct line. It is masterful because it is the domi
nant factor in harvesting. It is the best thing our genera
tion has been able to do for the grain farmer. Let us,
however, not be deceived by its present supremacy into
overvaluation of its service to all the generations of
humanity. Surely, as knowledge advances, there will
some day, somewhere, somehow, be something better
because the machine age is never satisfied with itself.
The combine produces results where even the tractor
binder falls short; and the windrow-harvester seems to
give promise that future combines will be able to do their
work where the natural moisture which nurtures growing
things now appears to command a halt. But perhaps we
men of to-day, fanners and manufacturers alike, will
scheme out a better way. We will if we can!

Most assuredly we will if we regard the reaper s first ap
pearance on the scene in its proper light. The harvester-
thresher has cut the direct cost of harvesting to less than
half, and it has eliminated the problem of outside labor
but it cannot be said to be a greater step in advance than
was the original reaper over harvesting by hand. Nor, in
spite of its greater worth, can it be said to possess a
greater value to society than the first crude machine
which started the trend toward mechanistic agriculture
that has ultimately developed the combine. How slothful
we would be if, given all the knowledge and progress that
has followed after the reaper, we could not have made a
harvester-thresher! Even in planning it we have turned
to 1831 for guidance. A hundred years have passed and
we have yet to find a flaw in those old seven elements
upon which the first reaper was based.

The first harvester-thresher included every one of these
elements in its ultra-modern structure. It had a reci-

POWER FARMING 219

procating knife, guards in front of the blade, a reel, a
platform, a main wheel, the principle of cutting to one
side of the implement, and the outside divider. The
harvester-thresher of to-day, new instrument of power
farming that it is, actuates its moving parts, not by the
main wheel drive from the ground, but by a power take
off from the tractor or by a separate engine. That, how
ever, is no new principle of mechanics; it merely calls
to the aid of the reaper s latest heir a system of propulsion,
the first rudiments of which were not even dreamed of
until forty-five years after the reaper s birth. Harvester
men are proud of the achievements of their colleagues
who scheme out artifacts of such real service to agricul
ture they can be prouder still of the invention which,
a century ago, made modern agriculture possible.

I have called the harvester-thresher the most spec
tacular achievement of power farming. It is possibly less
fundamentally significant than the many implements
that, usually in the form of attachments, are now appear
ing in the wake of the all-purpose tractor. It may be re
membered that power farming is a later step in advance of
tractor farming, in that it applies tractor power directly
to the work and does not merely use the tractor as a
better team. With the very recent advent of the all-
purpose type of tractor, it was natural to plan implements
which would directly suit the tractor.

The first of these machines, as has been said, was a
multiple-row cultivator. This began as a two-row device
and has lately been extended to span four rows. Other
work was studied and satisfactory types of horse-drawn
machines were reconstructed to suit new conditions.
Corn and cotton planters have been attached around the
all-purpose tractor in the fashion of cultivators. Corn
pickers are built upon its sides until the power unit is

220 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

almost concealed within the farm implement to which
it is applied. A new type of potato digger, which could
not otherwise have existed, is operated by the power
take-off. Certain plows are coupled closely to the tractor
so that the plow beams become almost an integral part of
it. Wheelless mowers with long cutter bars have been
designed to fit it and to take advantage of its quick-
turning ability. All the machines made to be pulled by
any tractor can, within the limit of its power, be towed as
successfully by the all-purpose model as by the standard.
The style of farm equipment is rapidly becoming changed.

Fifteen years ago, when the small tractor first ap
peared, it may have been, thought that the new device
was just a superior horse. Like the horse, it was hitched
in front of the implement and set to work. But consider
what happened when a binder, designed to operate at a
speed of one-and-three-quarters miles per hour, was
called upon to travel as much as three miles an hour. The
bearings had more and faster work to do; they failed,
as did the chain which actuated the binder s many
sprockets, and had to be replaced with high-duty bear
ings. Consider also the fact that when a slow-moving,
horse-drawn plow struck a concealed rock, the sensitive
animals stopped; but the tractor forged on, with the re
sult that the plow beam bent. Tractors have compelled
manufacturers to heat-treat beams in order to gain added
strength without added weight; and, similarly, to heat-
treat harrow disks to give them added life under the stress
of severer work.

The tractor has thus brought into being a higher type
of farm implement, more nearly suited to its own modern
ity. An implement designed to operate by tractor power
must be stronger, and therefore more expensive, than
one designed solely for horse draft; but it is more pro-

FARMALL TRACTORS CULTIVATING COTTON AND PICKING CORN

POWER FARMING 221

ductive, does better work, and is cheaper in the end. It
is a finer implement to match the quality of modern
farming. Of itself, regarded merely as a substitute for
animal traction, the tractor would have induced a re
designing of farm equipment. Now the all-purpose
tractor has come as well, and again the experimental
work of adapting old machines or producing new types
goes forward.

The horse is by no means a bygone power plant, how
ever much he may have vanished from the thousands of
American horseless farms* He must continue to serve
those farmers on the economic fringe who are just able to
pull through and whose operations cannot afford to sus
tain an investment in modern equipment. He will survive
long in those backward countries, where, because of a
low standard of living, labor is cheap. He may live long
est in the crowded communities of the Orient, where
animals as yet are possessions of the rich alone and
where hand harvesting is still the order of the day. But
the Orient is not all overpopulated; there are five horse
less farms in Indo-China. In any country there are farm
tasks that no horse is strong enough to do, and these
demand the tractor. In any country which seeks to
release the brains of its citizens from the deadening
burden of toil, power farming reigns.

The motor truck, too, has come to take its place as a
proper instrument of power farming. Threshed wheat,
for example, is customarily poured from the harvester-
thresher s storage tank into a motor truck and wheeled
away to the railside grain elevator. Urban needs re
quire the transportation of heavy, concentrated burdens,
whereas farms demand speed and instant service. There
fore, the Harvester Company s truck stations in the rural
districts concern themselves mainly with the distribution

222 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

of the lighter models. The servicing of motor trucks has
become well-nigh as important a function of the harvest
season as the servicing of harvesting machinery.

The purpose of all these power achievements of the
modern age of agriculture is to make better farming pos
sible. The average factory makes a better quality product
because of modern equipment than with the hand
methods formerly employed. The average fanner does
his work more in harmony with the standards of to-day s
demands for quality with machinery than without it.
But, just as it is probable that the principal objective of
mass production is to reduce the cost of manufactured
articles, even so is it certain that lower farm production
costs are the main benefit of power-farming equipment.
Wheat farmers of the West are aided by cheap land, but
it is the machinery of power farming that has allowed
them to cut the cost of raising their crops. The all-
purpose tractor methods of corn cultivation are still new,
yet in Iowa and Nebraska farmers are claiming savings
more than sufficient to pay for their power farming
equipment in a single year. Cotton planters in the better
districts, where fields are large enough to permit batteries
of tractors and their attachments to operate, can bring
their crop to the picking stage for considerably less than
half the cost of their old methods. Whether legislation
succeeds in solving the problem of farm prosperity or not,
power farming has provided a sure way to reduce farm
production costs.

The tractor and its attached implements will un
questionably permit larger farms. The story of hand
labor was want the story of machinery is plenty.
Within the reaper century farmers have advanced them
selves into a realm of undreamed-of power. An engineer
has computed that the United States does thirty-four

POWER FARMING 223

times as much work by means of machinery as by hand ;
whereas China, at the opposite end of the scale, performs
four-fifths of its labor manually. America is efficient be
cause of the faith it has reposed in mechanical instead of
muscular effort. Our farmers are more efficient than the
average of men. They demand the equipment that will
allow them to extend the power of their arms. Before
the reaper, one man could work, at the most, a two-acre
patch of wheat, while with the instruments of power
farming, individual productivity is multiplied a hundred
fold. Farms have grown in size because of available
horse-drawn machinery. Why should there not be, in
the future, still larger farms, as large as the fanner s
machine-backed physique and machine-directing brain
can command?

Power farming has brought many social advantages to
agriculturists. It has given them a broader individualism.
Its rapid pace has discovered new leisure for them within
the hours of the year to do those things which could not
be included in the dawn-to-dawn labor of the erstwhile
farm day. They have gained knowledge how to acquire
and use those conveniences and privileges, the radio and
the State University, which were formerly beyond their
reach. All these attributes have combined to widen the
intellectual horizon of the farmer. Individualism, leisure,
and knowledge are an immediate assistance toward a
better life, and they also multiply their fruits. I do not
say that the readjustment from ancient to modern ways
is easy, or that power farming has been the sole cause of
farm progress. Rather, fanners have wanted betterment
and so have created a demand for the tools of modernism.
But without them, without power farming, they would
have asked in vain.

It is the European habit to remain truer to traditional

224 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

methods than in America, where our nervous idealism is
ever searching for something new. Thus, farmers in the
Western Hemisphere have been largely willing to adapt
their land to machinery. European agriculture is more
provincial. Adherence to local tradition has asked that
machinery be adapted to favored local methods of plow
ing, of cultivating, and of harvesting. Individual selec
tion which is different from individualism is preva
lent in Europe s every attitude toward industry and is a
reason why mass production and its benefit of lower price
have not flourished there. To a certain extent this is
justified by the minute accuracy of the work that Europe
is unwilling to entrust to machinery. Perhaps tractor
attachments will solve those problems; or perhaps Con
tinental peasants will see from afar the liberation
America s machinery has wrought for her fanners and
will demand that they too be freed. Perhaps, even, the
European consumer will offer his producer a higher
standard of living in return for a cheaper price. It is not
so long since the invention of the spade and the scythe
eliminated three-quarters of the labor bill of soil prepara
tion and harvesting. In the last century the efficiency of
farm production has been increased from thirty to a
hundred times. There is room in the achievements of
these rapid days of ours for hope for the farmers of all
the world.

Of course, there will be improvements in the instru
ments of power farming. Oil or alcohol may reduce the
tractor s fuel bill, more refined tractor attachments may
succeed in applying power more directly or more usefully
to farm work, scientific farming methods will play an
increasingly important part. In the future, octogenarians
will doubtless say, as the old guard says to-day, We
worked a lot harder in those early days/ To be sure

POWER FARMING 225

they used muscle where we are using mind ; but perhaps
some future man will be able to demonstrate that 1931
did not realize, as another century may do, how best to
summon abstract forces to his aid. But we, I think, have
done reasonably well. Consider the case of a friend of
mine, whom I will call Mr. Highouse of the West: He
settled in Madison County in 1864, a boy with the world
before him waiting to be conquered. He turned the
prairie sod with a team of oxen and harvested his first
wheat with a cradle. Then he used a reaper; and then,
one by one, the successively improved generations of
the reaper s labor-saving children and grandchildren.
Finally, the harvester- thresher appeared upon the scene.
Highouse was old by then and his descendants harvested
in his place. In 1865, he and his like had spent three days
of man-labor to reap and thresh an acre of grain. In
1929, he watched his young grandson cut and thresh
thirty acres in a day. One lifetime spans the magnificent
transition from cradle to combine. I wonder what farm
ing will be like a hundred years from now?

CHAPTER XIII
THE DISTRIBUTION OF FARM EQUIPMENT

A MODERN corporation engaged in supplying an essential
product can, if it be favored with a public demand, enjoy
the privilege of success ; but by the same token it cannot
escape responsibilities. These responsibilities are heavy
when its position is that of a leader, for the public must
be served. Such a modern sentiment has for all time
been the watchword of the entire agricultural implement
industry. Cyrus Hall McCormick felt it subconsciously
as he was developing the many phases of his system of
distribution ; his successors and the successors of his rivals
patterned their methods after his; and the men of this
generation follow practices which are nothing more than
growth from ancient roots. I suppose that to-morrow
will be a development from 1931, that it will improve,
and that it will be true, as to-day is true, to the traditions
of the past.

It will be remembered that in the early days of the
reaper, McCormick appointed general agents whose duty
it was to travel over the country supervising the work of
local agents who in turn appointed subagents to contact
with the farmer. These last were country merchants,
crossroad blacksmiths, and even, in some cases, rural
postmasters. They were the forbears of the dealer of
to-day; but in the time of the early reaper, it was the
local agent and not the subagent who carried repair parts
and such stocks of machines as his territory demanded.
There were no company-owned branch houses, and a sur
prisingly large part of each year s volume of machines
was shipped from the factory in the weeks immediately
preceding harvest.

DISTRIBUTION OF FARM EQUIPMENT 227

One of the greatest elements of service that the modern
agricultural implement industry has been able to perfect
for its customers has been the development of a far-flung
system of branch houses. It has been related how the
local agent of Civil War times gradually became a jobber,
and how, when a manufacturer had sufficient capital
himself to control distribution as well as production,
territorial business was placed in the hands of a resident
manager. The usual title given this man by the Mc-
Cormick Harvesting Machine Company and its com
petitors was that of general agent (because, though his
field of operations was more limited, his duties coincided
with those of the original general agents). The Inter
national Harvester Company naturally fell heir to the
nomenclature as well as the employees of the constituent
companies. But with the growth of the business, due
first to new lines and then to tractors, the head of a terri
torial division became less an agent and more an execu
tive in his own right; so in 1917 his title was changed to
branch manager/

The typical personnel of a branch has followed the
original lines, but naturally it is much larger now than in
the old days. The field staff is traditionally built up of
blockmen/ who do business with the several dealers in a
predetermined subdivision of the branch territory, and of
salesmen, or canvassers, who work with the dealer and
lend him skilled selling assistance in his contact with the
farmer. The dealers are more machinery-conscious now
than in former years, and they find it to their advantage
to do much of the work of setting up machines newly
received from the factory or the branch warehouse, and
of the servicing of minor complaints. The farmer is also
a far cleverer mechanic than was formerly the case and
has grown accustomed to do himself many of the serv-

228 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

icing jobs that were once done for him. Therefore, the
branch manager s force of field experts is smaller and
more skilled than it used to be.

These three ranks of field men, the blockmen, the
salesmen, and the service men, constitute the infantry of
the Harvester army. They were the ones who carried out
the orders of their captains and fought the harvester war;
they were the ones who staged the demonstrations which
won the tractor war; they are the shock troops, brave and
skilled and determined, who lead every advance toward
wider sales or deeper service. I have been one of them,
and from them I learned to make my theoretical, inher
ited ideals practical, to realize how the great business
entity must fail to function, however sound its heart, if its
hands be not willing and able. Numberless tales of self-
sacrifice and devotion might be linked to their personali
ties. I choose but one for record here.

One day, when I was a very new and self-important
general agent in southern Kansas, a farmer called on me.
Because he respected the Harvester Company and wished
it well, he came to tell me how one of my salesmen was
wasting Company time. * I was plowing when he came
to my farm and tried to sell me a spreader. I told him I
didn t want one, so he said he d help me plow. Well, he
did, and the afternoon went on, so I invited him to stay
and eat. After supper he wanted to talk spreader again
to tell me what it would do to pep up my soil. So it
got kind of late and I asked him to spend the night. Next
morning he started in to talk spreader again, and when I
shut him up, he said he d help me do my chores and then
we d plow some more. So, just to get rid of him, I bought
the damn spreader. Say, Mac, how soon can I get it?
he sure got me all hopped up on how I can build up my
field! But he sure wasted a lot of time on one little sale!

DISTRIBUTION OF FARM EQUIPMENT 229

Perhaps. Perhaps he also earned that farmer one or
two bushels more of corn to the acre and made him the
price of the machine in the year. Perhaps, also, he was
the spiritual heir of D. R. Burt, who fought Manny in
Iowa and l sold twenty machines/ Burt lived sixty years
before my salesman, but unless I am much mistaken, the
breed has not yet died out. The objective of the attack
has changed that is all. Competitors still strive with
each other, but not in the same cut-throat 7 way they
fight for better agriculture.

The old-time blockman had to concern himself with
a relatively simple line of harvest tools. Now, however
remarkable may be his knowledge of the multitude of
machines in his catalogue, he can no longer be a specialist
in all of them. Thus, special travelers have come into
being, men recruited mainly from the ranks of the block-
men, who travel over the territory of one or several
branches to bring their specific knowledge of cream
separators or engines or motor trucks or other lines to
bear on local problems. These specialty men frequently
operate under the control of specialty managers in the
home office whose duty it is to supervise the distribution
of some particular class or product rather than to follow
the progress of the Company s entire line, as do the
regular departmental managers. The ramifications of
Harvester s full line are so many that there is room for
specialization even at the top of its trained sales force.

The most complete segregation between classes of
product is in the case of motor trucks. Many excellent
implement men make but inferior automotive salesmen
and many highly successful truck mechanics are not
temperamentally suited for direct dealings with farm
psychology. Therefore, in certain instances there has
been effected an almost complete separation of the motor

230 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

truck from the implement staff. The motor-truck per
sonnel is usually housed on the branch property, fre
quently in a separate building; but if the warehouse itself
is not well situated for motor-truck sales, it carries on in
a service station placed in the center of truck activity
in the city in question. In the metropolitan areas, as for
example in New York, where there is no chance for
agricultural implement sales, the motor-truck branch is
entirely independent and self-contained.

The branch manager has an assistant to aid him in the
conduct of his affairs. Both of these men travel widely
over the territory and supervise all sales problems. As
in the case of every business anywhere in the world, the
boss cannot hope to sit at home at his desk and regulate
distribution by correspondence. He must know his ma
chines and, what is far more important, know his cus
tomers and to perform either of these intricate tasks
adequately, he must travel nearly as much as the block-
man. He gains an independent judgment of crop condi
tions, is in touch with rural opinion, and himself helps
carry to the dealer and to the country what message he
can of the labor-saving, profit-producing feats of mecha
nized agriculture.

What men they were and are, these general agents of
the old days and these branch managers of more recent
times ! To select one from among those I know who are
gone or are living in well-earned ease among the orange
groves of Southern California would be an injustice.
There are too many others whose exploits have passed
my notice because the days of 1931 are too crowded
with the business of the present to give due consideration
to the foundations upon which our work is reared. The
men of the old days poured their sweat upon the land to
further the cause of reapers and harvesters and binders;

DISTRIBUTION OF FARM EQUIPMENT 231

and in so doing they showed us the way to combines and
tractors. They stood beside my grandfather and my
father. They worked with them to take a load off the
backs and straining arms of farmers in order to let us
show agriculture how to find leisure by means of thought
fully planned work.

I cannot find it in me to do less than pay due honor to
the past. It is the foundation stone of our existence.
There would have been no chance for the brilliant young
executive of to-day to be manager over the sales destinies
of a force of fifty men if the general agent of twenty years
ago had not been master of the details of Harvester s few
old lines. We who are the younger generation are false
to their charge to us if we do not improve. We fall short
if we merely grasp at their heritage. Branch managers
are general agents, changed not in title only, but in fact.
We ride on the wings of power farming where they first
taught the fledgling how to fly. We are efficient because
they first showed the farmer how to think in terms of
machinery. We serve in a wider sense because they lifted
for us a corner of the veil of the future.

In his work to-day the branch manager has the ready
assistance of a branch advertising man. Where Cyrus
Hall McCormick and his contemporaries were accustomed
to write their own advertising copy, rightly believing that
they, the heads and frequently the originators of their
businesses, knew more than other men about such few
machines as they had to sell, advertising is now a spe
cialized science. There is a large department at the home
office to prepare copy for magazine and newspaper ad
vertisements, catalogues, and the many mailing folders
favored by the publicity system of the implement in
dustry. The branch advertising man sells publicity in the
same way that the blockman sells contracts. Advertising

232 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

is nothing if it is not an aid to salesmanship ; and a system
of distribution which fails to link the personal message
of the printed page with the personal persuasion of the
spoken word, falls short of its mark.

Included in the staff of a branch house is, of course, an
office manager, who in the days of the past used to be the
cashier who kept the accounts. There is also a credit
manager to keep in touch with the financial stability of
potential customers before a sale is made. In certain dis
tricts there is a collection manager who handles, generally
for several adjacent branches, such time paper as may
accompany the settlement of a contract. There is the
service manager whose duty it is to supervise all forms
of territorial service work. Finally, there is the repairs
foreman, as important a factor and as representative
of Harvester s ideals as any man on the branch manager s
staff. He it is who presides over the long rows of tiered
wooden bins steel in the most recently, constructed
buildings and furnishes spare parts as readily for an
1899 mower as for a 1931 harvester-thresher.

I do not think that the Harvester Company distribut
ing system which I am describing differs widely from that
of its main competitors except in size. No company can
hope to be really effective in the agricultural implement
industry unless it is prepared to cover fully as much of
the territory as it plans to serve. Many organizations are
not nation-wide; and yet they can make their sales pres
sure felt in the given district in which they choose to
operate. Of course you must assume that any one who
desires to do business with farmers should have in his
hands a manufactured article that contains no surplus
dollar of price-raising cost. If he wishes to do a repeat
business, he must have first designed and then built
quality into his product, for the farmer is a keen buyer,

DISTRIBUTION OF FARM EQUIPMENT 233

quick to criticize and willing to change if his conceptions
of machine service are not met. Above all, he must realize
that the machines he is selling are planned to do neces
sary, unavoidable work and work is the real root of
service.

-The larger part of the system of Harvester branches
lying across North America was originally developed by
the McCormick and Deering Companies before 1902. In
a few locations the Champion or the Osborne building
was more desirable, and when P & O was acquired, it
brought with it several fine warehouse properties. Of
course the consolidation resulted in the disposal of certain
branches; and when the inflated condition of the old
harvesting-machine lines was appreciated, it was found
that others could be consolidated without injury to the
business or hardship to customers. The natural increase
in volume through the years has required additional sales
points where the trade in a district could be more intensely
cultivated to advantage. Much of the recent increased
business has developed in the West in particular in
the dry-farming sections and new distributing centers
have been provided wherever required. The skeleton of
the distribution system is flexible and has been kept in
constant balance with the status of the business. Its
object has been to supply agricultural implements to
farmers where and when they need them.

The original type of branch warehouse has not proved
suitable for the storage of the bulkier types of new power
machinery. Formerly farm equipment could invariably
be shipped from the factory to the country in disassem
bled units. Such integral parts as wheels and poles could
be packed together in a freight car and the main parts
of the machine could be nested in crates. A six-foot grain
binder, for example, reaches the dealer in thirteen sepa-

234 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

rate shipping packages. All these parts could easily be
stored in tiers in any available type of building. Thus an
implement warehouse of the time-honored variety was
most frequently a multiple-story building conveniently
located with regard to railway switching, more or less
without concern for any other than railway accessibility.

The advent of trucks, tractors, harvester-threshers,
corn pickers, and other large machines has furnished for
farm use a type of implement complicated enough to re
quire the most highly skilled assembly. The retail dealer
or even the individual farmer can set up a binder or a
mower or a plow, but the mechanical requirements of
tractor or truck assembly can be better and more cheaply
accomplished in a factory organized for repetitive opera
tions. Therefore, the most modern types of power ma
chinery are sent out to the country as complete (in the
case of the tractor) or as nearly complete (in the case of
the combine) machines. They are transportable on their
own wheels and can be more readily stored on one level
than on the floors of a multiple-story building. Crated
implements can be packed away just as easily in such a
structure as in the traditional type of warehouse. Thus
the modern implement storage building has become a
one-story type of structure.

Another cogent reason for this has been the great in
crease in the construction cost of buildings. A business
dealing with the necessities of life cannot afford to burden
its prices with a single unnecessary penny of direct cost
or overhead expense. Thus, when a new warehouse has
to be built, the type to be selected will obviously be an
inexpensive sheet-iron or similar building built on reason
ably cheap land rather than a comparatively costly mill-
construction or concrete structure located in the crowded
heart of a city s wholesale district. It is cheaper to put
up such a building as well as more convenient.

DISTRIBUTION OF FARM EQUIPMENT 235

The present-day model of implement warehouse has
also been materially affected by the wide spread of auto
mobile and motor-truck transportation. A retail dealer,
whose store was situated twenty or thirty miles from a
branch house, used to receive his supply of implements
by local railway freight. He would either have to antici
pate most of his year s requirements to make up a mixed
car at the branch warehouse, or pay the added freight for
less-than-carload shipments. Nor could the railways pro
vide expeditious transportation on their minor rural lines.
The motor truck has corne forward to solve these prob
lems, and an important number of machines are now
delivered from the company branch to the retail dis
tributor by highway instead of by rail. The Red Baby
taught the dealer, not merely to carry implements for sale
and service out to the farmer, but also to use road trans
portation to connect himself more directly with his
source of supply.

The shipping platforms of a modern implement ware
house must therefore face the dusty highway as well as
the rails leading away to the factory. At harvest time the
red truck will be there, and beside it will be a farmer s
automobile or truck. He has come to town to secure
some unusual repair part which the large branch stock
will provide, or to visit the new show room to inspect
there some new type of implement that he has seen adver
tised, or which has been of service to a neighbor. When
the farmer drove a buggy, he could not spare the time
to trot twenty-five miles to town ; but to-day distance is
a matter of less importance. Therefore there is a grow
ing and more friendly contact, engendered largely by the
branch repairs room and the sample floor, between the
ultimate consumer and the Company s territorial ware
house. Where the branch used to be no more than a

236 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

depot close to an agricultural district for the temporary
storage of goods in transit from factory to farm, with
incidental offices for the sales force, it has now become
more vital. Its show room is an attractive place where
the entire locally used line may be displayed. Its for
merly unvisited repairs department has been moved from
the fourth floor to a space immediately behind the sample
room, where its impressive stock of spare parts may
serve as an assurance of instant service. The branch has
become the center of a radiating farm equipment activity.
All this has resulted in solidifying the contact between
the individual farmer and the company which serves him.
And yet, if the branch house has become the center of the
territorial system, the newly developed distributing con
tacts have strengthened, not the International Harvester
Company alone, but the retail dealer as well. His busi
ness has also developed and kept up with the times. He
has changed from a small agent for machinery sold on
commission into an independent merchant. Much has
been written and said about the precarious state of the
country implement dealer. Fifteen years ago one out of
every four failed each year but that was when most
farm equipment distributors were small and weak. Then,
the old-line machinery in the agent s store belonged to
the company for which he handled it and, unless he could
prevail upon his customers to pay him a premium because
of the special service he could render them, he could not
hope to earn more from his efforts than a mere commis
sion. Such a thing as a dealer who sold farm equipment
exclusively was almost unknown. No company had a
really full line; and the local agent had to bolster up his
business with hardware, furniture, funeral direction, and .
the like. I do not mean to say that in isolated com
munities where stores are few or in districts where agri-

DISTRIBUTION OF FARM EQUIPMENT 237

culture is not a major industry, a dealer does not still
have to resort to other merchandise to round out twelve
months of selling effort and income. Nevertheless, I am
satisfied that, wherever circumstances permit, an imple
ment dealer best serves his own interests to say
nothing of those of the farmer if he is able to concen
trate his attention on the business of providing his com
munity with farm operating equipment.

Many an old-time implement dealer s store was housed
in a dilapidated frame building decorated with a faded
sign informing the street in front of him as to his where
abouts. Dusty bins along one wall contained nails and
screws, tin cups and hinges, or porcelain pans and alumi
num kettles. A glass case exhibited a shotgun or two,
some ammunition and cutlery. Toward the rear, a broken
package of brooms sprawled over a partly assembled
cream separator. His desk, marked principally by a
legion of advertising calendars, was littered with papers,
unmailed bills, and mislaid notices of cash discounts
which prompt attention might have secured. Other racks
held his disordered stock of implement repair parts.
Repairs for the old harvesting lines which, like the parent
machines, were sold on commission alone, were tossed
in some dark corner, waiting. Too frequently the dealer
himself waited for business to come to him or for the
canvasser from the branch to arrive and, by force of
superior persuasion, drag him out into the country.
Implements were exhibited in disused barns or on adja
cent vacant lots.

Lest any one think this is too dreary a picture of the
past, let me say that it is drawn from my own sales ex
perience, not with the best dealers, it is true, but with
the average. In 1915, though we still used to sit around
the stove in winter and gossip about a thousand other

238 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

things than business, the transition toward modern
methods was already beginning to be apparent. We im
plement men were ourselves learning what a vital sales
asset neatly organized repair bins could be; and the home
office was beginning to criticize the large repair inven
tories which showed on our books, and which were useless
because so many forgotten or obsolete parts reposed in
the dark corners of the dealer s shed.

Automobile salesmen were clamoring for glass-win
dowed show rooms to shelter and exhibit their shin
ing cars. The merchants of a village were learning the
commercial value of an ordered street. Attractive adver
tising literature was making it seem desirable to display
machines attractively. Implement dealers associations
were preaching the keeping of accurate accounts and a
more accurate knowledge of the cost of retail distribution;
and they were urging manufacturers to allot more terri
tory to an agent and so give him an adequate field in
which to operate. Our developing line of machines was
every year causing us to feel a growing pride which we
were passing on to the dealer. Farmers were asking more
questions and, as they became better farmers under the
touch of the widening influence of the agricultural col
leges, were demanding more mechanical instruction.

The twentieth-century flowering of American industry
has not come suddenly. It has been a gradual and there
fore a sure growth. The retail agricultural implement
dealer has been a vital part of it. He came into existence
first as a pioneer who, armed with vigorous enthusiasm
instead of cash capital, followed the first farmers into the
prairies of the young West. There, because he was the
only merchant for miles around, he sought to purvey to
all their needs. As more agricultural machinery was pro
duced, he turned certain of his activities over to the

DISTRIBUTION OF FARM EQUIPMENT 239

general merchant and to the country grocer. Then came
the harvester war of the Eighteen-Nineties; and the too-
intense competition of that day caused his kind to multi
ply until, just as there were too many grain binders, there
were also too many harvesting-machinery dealers. To
supply the several companies demands for distributing
centers, the curbstone dealer, this time no pioneer, re
appeared in the picture. After the formation of the Inter
national Harvester Company, when the saturation point
of the old harvesting-machine lines had been reached, the
declining farm demand brought production under control.
Then, because there were still too many dealers, their
vitality was sapped and they sagged back into desuetude.
Their proper position has lately been reconstituted, partly
by the advance of modern methods in the implement
industry itself, partly by the onward surge of modern
life.

Of these two causes, the latter was undoubtedly the
more important. The things one industry does are but
reflections of the times; and yet the customs of our times
are nothing more than the product of our thoughts. So
it is possible that the developing policies of the Inter
national Harvester Company, touching so intimately
such a large portion of the people, may well have helped
along the modernization of agricultural life. It is certain
that they did so in the case of the Nation s implement
dealers. At least they helped to clothe the retailer with
the first garments of his present independence.

As has been said, the early Harvester sales contracts
were all of the commission variety. That is to say, the
Company retained the ownership of the machines until
the consummation of the retail sale and, though no retail
price was named in the contract, retained a nominal con
trol of the implement through the actual possession of the

2 4 o THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

farmer s note given in settlement of the transaction. As
the new lines were added one by one, the dealer gained
a need of property independence due to the fact that
manure spreaders, cream separators, tillage tools, and the
like were made the subject of outright sale. That this
could be accomplished was doubtless partly a reflection
of the agricultural prosperity that accompanied the ad
vancing years of the twentieth century. Still, the prac
tice also marked the transition of the dealer from a mere
agent of the manufacturer into a merchant doing business
on his own account.

In 1908 nine- tenths of the Company s contracts were
of the commission variety. As the relative importance of
the old harvesting-machine lines declined, the business
became more and more centered on the new-line, sales-
contract plan; and in 1917 the commission form of con
tract was entirely abandoned. The reaction among the
great body of dealers was immediate. At a stroke they
achieved complete control of their own affairs and became
individuals instead of agents. It is possible that no man
can attain mental ascendancy without financial independ
ence. Dealers now do a large and a better business. How
ever much the growth of the tractor, and in certain cases
the motor truck, may have aided, I am sure that the in
tellectual stimulus provided by financial independence or
the real hope of it has been the major reason. Dealers
have become thinking individuals, business men in their
own right.

Consider the fervor with which the International
Harvester Company s dealers took hold of the Red
Baby campaign. Like the rest of the population of the
country, the farmers were engaged in a buyers strike and
the mere fact of lowered prices failed to attract them.
But the better dealers, equipped now with crimson

DISTRIBUTION OF FARM EQUIPMENT 241

motor trucks, loaded machines into them and toured
their districts searching more intensively than ever before
for sales outlets. They carried their cream separators
and cultivators and feed grinders to the country, set
up and ready to operate. They themselves worked the
implements on a farmer s premises, and they proved to
him that, depression or no, he needed this equipment
in order to continue his service of supplying food to the
world.

The Harvester Company s existence depends upon its
ability to serve the farmer. The dealer distributes this
service, acts as a channel of contact between the supply
and the demand. The farmer himself holds a place in
civilization proportionate to his ability to serve. These
axioms are nothing but a picture of the interlocking re
quirements of modern life and the economic dependence
of individuals and nations upon the service of a
neighbor.

The typical implement dealer of to-day is housed in a
brick building which yields nothing in attractiveness to
the automobile shop front. The Harvester branch office
itself has become, not a hidden-away structure with
narrow warehouse windows, but a place where the Com
pany s products may be seen and, because it is willing to
express its pride in them, appreciated. The dealer has
followed suit. His wide windows protect and reveal the
tractors or the cream separator or the corn sheller or
the binder twine which are the seasonal expression of his
interest in the cause of agricultural equipment. His repair
parts, which are his property and his stock in trade, are
neatly housed in ordered bins where their presence may
act as a visible proof of his ability to meet the exigencies
of wear-and-tear and work. His desk itself is organized,
and every possible discount is in his bank. He is a busi-

242 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

ness man. Therefore, like the Harvester branch manager,
he is to be most frequently found, not in his place of
business, but in the country, drumming up sales, sens
ing the needs of farmers, promulgating the message of
mechanized agriculture.

Any such sales system as I have described, built upon
the frame of so many branch houses throughout the
country and manned with a personnel whose traditions
are those of service, whose practice in life is that of a
fair fight, and whose object is success through progress,
must necessarily depend much upon the strength of in
dividualism. The dealer, dependent though he may be
for his well-being upon the strength of the parent com
pany, cannot profitably order machinery he cannot sell.
The farmer, greatest of all individualists in the world,
cannot buy equipment unless through its use he can
make a profit. With all the best will possible, neither
branch manager nor dealer nor farmer is able to forecast
absolutely the moods of fickle Nature. Bad weather may
ruin the promise of adequate sunshine or rain; or a
clement harvest season may redeem incipient disaster.
Individualism itself is an uncertain science; and when to
it are added the uncertainties of climate, prediction of
the volume of business to be expected becomes too much
a matter of luck.

Hence the Harvester Company requires these many
storage depots spread abroad across the land. Behind
them are the huge warehouses of the factories; and in
between are six great so-called transfer warehouses where
machines are pooled to await the unexpected demand for
last-minute shipments that seldom fails to eventuate
somewhere. The Company maintains a department to
keep track of machines in storage, to keep account of
repairs, and to anticipate the manufacturing demands

TYPICAL FARM-IMPLEMENT DEALERS STORES ON THE
CANADIAN FRONTIER AND IN THE DEVELOPED SOUTHWEST

DISTRIBUTION OF FARM EQUIPMENT 243

as far as may be. But the successful functioning of the
system depends upon an understanding of farm condi
tions. If a dealer s motor truck is driven up to the branch
house the day before a farmer wants a new grain binder
or a tractor to save his crop, it must be filled. The
Harvester Company must remain true to its ideals of
service and must help that farmer perform his service to
the world.

The system of distribution is largely the same in
Canada as in the United States, but with due regard to
the comparative youth of Canadian agriculture. The
first branch house was opened by McCormick in Winni
peg in 1887. Shortly after the amalgamation of 1902, the
new lands of the West began to attract settlers, fanning
began to penetrate another wilderness, and Harvester
stood ready again to carry instant aid to the distant com
munity of pioneer farmers. Because of the efforts of men
who built their sod homes on the prairies and in the
timbered fringes of the North, machinery men leaped to
follow the advance guard of Northwestern agriculture.
They rode the biweekly train to Edmonton, just as they
had once gone out on the Union Pacific to the West and
as they are now carrying implements by the waterway to
Peace River. The Canadian Northwest prospered until
the boom began. Then, as happens in every boom, specu
lators grew rich and soon crashed. Farmers were affected
and bought supplies of all kinds for which they had no
need mammoth tractors, for example, whose utility
coyld be measured only in terms of the broad horizon.

The collapse of the boom could not affect the basic
wealth of Canada. Ontario had to a certain extent
equipped itself with the accouterments of industry, but
the foundation of Canadian prosperity is agriculture.
In its train have marched Harvester s branch houses, its

244 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

blockmen, its army of dealers, and its open hand of
service to the farmers of the North.

Across the waters, too, the Harvester Company has
followed the trail of agriculture. The McCormick Com
pany, first in Odessa, established its own branches wher
ever possible. The Deerings, strong in production but
not such keen salesmen, tried to meet their rivals with
an army of jobbers. Thus, precedents and preferences
were established which have required the Company
to maintain the separate identities of McCormick and
Deering machines in Europe (where the trade is now
partly supplied by the European factories) and in South
America. But the jobbers bought for cash no more than
they could resell in the same way. Therefore, the weak
type of jobber who existed before 1902 has given way to
the foreign branch. Yet much of the International s for
eign business is with certain jobbers, strong firms which
possess an unequaled ability to serve agriculture in their
districts. They have learned Harvester methods from
Harvester men.

It is a tribute to Harvester Spirit that so many non-
Americans all over the world, the personnel of the far-
flung system of distribution, have become so finely im
bued with the ideal of the American agricultural imple
ment industry. It has gripped them in the distant pas
tures of Europe, where, in a dozen different languages,
they are spreading the gospel of better agriculture. South
America knows it, and South Africa Egypt, too, and
the dry hills of North Africa. Cold Manchuria and the
tropical Philippines are experiencing the benefits of Har
vester service. Its message is old in Australia and New
Zealand and new in the islands and the tropical lands
along the antipodean equator. India and China, in spite
of their millions, are turning to farm power to accomplish

DISTRIBUTION OF FARM EQUIPMENT 245

those farm tasks for which the millions are too weak.
Everywhere under the sun where agriculture exists, there
is also a nucleus of Harvester service everywhere ex
cept in Russia. Even there Harvester machinery is busy ;
but the living presence, the spirit of Harvester men,
exists only as an echo of the past.

The routine of my job has led me frequently into the
far corners of the world. It is one thing to manufacture
the tools of agriculture; but if you do not yourself know
how they are performing, you will lose touch. I have seen
seventy-five-bushel wheat on a New Zealand farm and
the machine-tearing roughness of the mallee district in
Australia; tractors laboring in a Filipino jungle or march
ing over the endless rice terraces of Indo-China and
Siam; motor trucks starting for the horizon of Manchuria
or portering the burdens of New Japan. I have heard
how fifty harvester-threshers in a line collect the yield
of the Argentine pampas, how plows are redeeming the
waste prairies of South Africa, and how power machinery
is reviving the agriculture of Russia. The still-used reaper
clatters through the small fields of Europe and Harvester
implements perform the hardest labor of redeemed
peasants.

In all these places I can feel at home. I can think of
Alex Legge s story of a famous attorney called in to give
counsel in a time of trouble. * I have studied many cor
porations/ the lawyer said, but there is something in the
Harvester Company deeper than in them all. You differ,
you fight like cats and dogs for your opinions but if
you are attacked, you fight for each other. You are the
best team I have ever seen. Why? 5

Legge told him that this was due to the traditions of the
inventor of the reaper and to the character of his son.
He neglected to add that he himself had given his all

246 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

to help my father instill Harvester Spirit in the Inter
national army. Together they brought about a square
deal for all employees, a squar^ deal for all customers.
Perhaps, after all, loyalty to such an ideal is the Com
pany s greatest single sales asset throughout the world.

CHAPTER XIV
THE HARVESTER SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION

THE production system of the International Harvester
Company is not very different from that of other large,
successful organizations. In origin it springs from the
same circumstances that have made America the leading
industrial nation in the world; and in development its
growth has kept pace with the unfolding of our national
commercial destiny. Industry has been America s leading
contribution to modern civilization. We have produced
great scholars, but none, it will be agreed, better than
others in other parts of the world. We have produced
great artists, but none to excel the sculptors, the painters,
the musicians, and the architects of other climes. Our
thinkers are noteworthy, but their abstractions can
hardly rival those of the Orient. We are the most sizable
free nation on the globe, but we did not invent democ
racy. We did, however, organize it more widely than any
other people because we approached it with the same
mental vigor which has been able so broadly to organize
our industry. We have offered our citizens the inspiring
hope of politics for all, of education for all and now,
through our industrial system, we are exploring and
claiming the first fruits of prosperity for all

Our industrial development is the basis for our one
daim to recognition in the eyes of the world. We have
organized machinery and man-power, not merely as in
struments of efficiency, but rather as the method of pro
viding us with an ever-sufficient supply to meet our
ever-increasing wants. The Nation has grown rich and
materially powerful out of industry. Perhaps we feel that
because we possess the things which other men cannot

248 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

gain with their unaided physical strength, we are not as
other men. We have a wage system that is admittedly
not yet perfect, but that gives workers the opportunity to
gain for themselves the best fruits of capitalism. We have
organized opportunity itself until it has been reduced to a
practical rule and is available for all men.

Possibly we who have so many advantages at our beck
and call do not sufficiently recognize that we have our
ancestors to thank for our present material prosperity.
They gave us our reapers, our railways, our electricity,
and the rudiments of our every instrument of production.
Of course we, with more experience and more sophistica
tion than the pioneers could possibly possess, have im
proved upon the equipment they devised to satisfy their
lives. It is certainly as true of modern mechanics as of
modern science that if an individual had stopped learning
even in 1900 he would be hopelessly out-of-date to-day.
What of it? Our ancestors never ceased improving their
own work, and it is not too much to suppose that the
spirit of their genius is asking us to do likewise. They be
queathed to us the crude tools of their devising; and,
what is of far greater importance, they passed on to us the
inspiration of their achievement.

America is free politically and socially and intellectu
ally, so free that we are never afraid to scrutinize our. own
deeds with a criticism that compels us to go on and do
something better. American industry has developed out
of this attitude. Machinery, itself a product of the free
genius of liberated thought, rescued our national life
from the incubus of limitation and lifted industry to an
intellectual par with scholarship. It created wealth and a
steady supply of those rare comforts which we to-day
regard as essential. It created earning power which made
the acquisition of luxuries possible. Of course machinery

HARVESTER SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION 249

did not do this in an instant, since, like the inventive
thought out of which it sprang, it was itself a progressive
growth. So it has been with industry, at once the child
and the parent of machinery- Industry is free-thinking,
aggressive, self-expressive, and self-assertive; it is experi
ment-minded, in that it is ever willing to attempt the
seemingly impossible; it is idealistic, in that it has been
able to realize the dreams of other peoples; and, since
it is so free from restricting limitations, it is represent
ative of, and is the best product of, the free stream of
American life.

It has been suggested elsewhere in this book that Cyrus
Hall McCormick s influence was a vital force in the up
building of early American industry. We know that he
was himself a pioneer in the origination of plans for dis
tribution, credit to customers, advertising, and the like ;
and we may infer that the manufacturing methods
employed in his factory were radically original and
progressive. No adequate history of American industry
had yet been written, and that part of it which deals with
manufacturing is still sealed in the personal experience
of the generation of men just passed or is the stock in
trade of a younger generation, which even now is carving
new experiences on the rocky cliffs of time. Therefore, as
a prelude to a discussion of the production methods of the
International Harvester Company, I shall take the lib
erty of stating what seem to me to be the fundamental
principles of production s modern state:

Machinery is important only when interpreted in
the light of its social importance to humanity. Thus,
the reaper rendered man a double service by light
ening his labor and increasing his supply of food.

Machinery is desirable only when it accomplishes

250 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

such tasks by producing more or better or cheaper
articles than man, without its aid, can provide.
Thus, transportation has made all the world neigh
bors and power has made man a king.

Machinery must fail if it be regarded as a sub
stitute for brains. Its proper function is to serve
man s individuality, not to master it. At the heart
of industry lies the human equation.

There is no particular originality in this statement of
the fundamental principles of machine production. They
are modern and differ from the conception of the past in
that, in harmony with the basic theories of American
industry, they make machinery the servant of brains.
They may be learned from factory managers and from
factory workmen. The Harvester Company system,
which may seem to a layman to be but designed to meet
the necessity of the moment, is based on them. So also
are they typical, perhaps not of all factories in the United
States, but of the better ones. For all time, as long as
men are men, there will be some who lead, some who
follow. Because of the latter there will be conservatism,
and because of the leaders there will be progress.

Eighty years ago the old McCormick shop by the
Chicago River was an outstanding leader in the develop
ment of American manufacture. The inventor of the
reaper did not himself plan this, but unquestionably he
inspired it. Visitors came from afar to study manufactur
ing efficiency as exemplified by the processes in vogue in
McCormick and Deering Works. In the middle period of
Harvester history, .every energy of his successors had to
be given to selling. They fought successfully to hold their
place, they expanded their business far beyond the realm
he had bequeathed to them; and so it happened that

HARVESTER SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION 251

their interest centered on the outward, dramatic elements
of service to fanners rather than on stay-at-home matters
of production.

It is not my present purpose to tell what the many
factories of the International Harvester Company do.
There are thirty-one of them and all are engaged in
making the machines which are the latest generation of
the reaper s progeny. Rather, I wish to suggest how and
why they do their work, and also to relate how a change
from an ancient to a modern scheme of production was
brought about. Harvester s production is now as much in
line as is its distribution with the aim of service to the
farmer. All phases of the system are harmonized to bring
about this one desired result, including the functions of
designing, purchasing, manufacturing, and the other col
lateral activities which lend their strength to production.

It has already been suggested that the Harvester Com
pany s rebirth into the realm of manufacturing efficiency
was due partly to the cry for cost-reduction following
the business depression of 1921 and partly to the tractor
war which started in 1922. If I feel unable to assess
the relative importance of these two causes, it is prob
ably due to the fact that in those years the demand for
lower production costs was so keen and so continually
insistent that management had too little time for self-
analysis. Suffice it to say that the post-war generation
of Harvester factory men taught themselves a new effi
ciency.

Measured in terms of present knowledge which is an
admittedly unfair test there was no such thing before
1915 as a really efficient manufacturing enterprise in the
entire country. It is true that a few industries, such as
the Chicago packing-houses, had accomplished marvels
in the elimination of waste effort through the introduc-

252 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

tion of successively synchronized operations. But, be
cause of comparatively low wages throughout the Na
tion, there was not the same urge as in recent years to
reduce labor cost by the elimination of labor waste.
There can be no proper control over the cost of produc
tion without the most careful scrutiny of the labor bill.
On the average, three-fourths of the cost of manufactured
articles represents labor devoted to it or to its constituent
materials. Even an electric generating station at the
mouth of a coal mine has to contemplate labor spent
in producing the metals for its transmission lines and in
erecting them before it can compute the labor content of
its product when in the hands of the consumer. In the
case of agricultural implements, where the most widely
used materials are pig iron, steel, and lumber, one must
consider the labor cost of these materials at the mines and
in the forests ; the labor cost of transporting them to the
factory, not forgetting a share of the labor cost of building
the freight car which carried them; the labor cost of turn
ing raw materials into a finished product; the labor cost of
distribution; and, since this is also the hardest kind of
labor, the human energy spent in organizing the ore from
the ground into the working tractor in the farmer s field.
Men did not realize these things as clearly as they do
now until the war-time demand for the production of
these supplies of all kinds, which Europe could no longer
make for itself, created a scarcity of labor. More men
were sought for the factories of the land than were avail
able and, though women soon came forth to stand at the
bench beside their brothers and husbands, the shortage
resulted in a rapidly rising scale of wages. Early in 1917
the rising cost of labor began to be a matter of primary
concern. The automobile industry was still young at that
time. It had few precedents to stand as a bar to experi-

HARVESTER SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION 253

mentation and less of an investment in plant and equip
ment, so it was for the moment more easily able to as
similate new doctrines than were the historic companies.
It made the startling discovery that there was an inher
ent difference between the price of labor and labor cost.
This was really no discovery at all, except to the adven
turous young men of the automobile industry. Reaper
builders had known it of old, and so had makers of steel
and the designers of slaughter-houses. But the older gen
eration had either forgotten what it had once discovered
for itself or had spent so much money developing its own
processes that it was content to rest on its laurels.

The automobile men found out that one could at the
same time reduce the labor content of a manufactured
article and leave the labor rate untouched. This they
were able to do by the provision of special manufacturing
equipment so designed that a machine tool would per
form at once two or more operations on a piece. They
adopted exactly the same theory that, for example, had
underlain the development of mower-frame boring ma
chines, and arranged to machine the different faces of a
crankcase at one pass through a milling machine. They
devised multiple drills and prepared types of speed
wrenches to enable a nut to be screwed more quickly on a
bolt. They sent men all over the world to bring back any
possible word of fast-working tools in other factories.
Most important of all, they organized crews of specialists
whose sole task was to study their own methods with a
view of simplification and improvement.

Some one of them discovered that, a few years before,
a mechanical engineer by the name of Frederick W. Tay
lor who, more than any other man, is the father of
modern scientific manufacturing had written a book to
prove that, when the successive operations of any produc-

254 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

tion program were planned in advance by the factory
management rather than left to the discretion of an indi
vidual foreman, time could be saved. Taylor showed, for
example, that without additional strain a workman could
lift more weight if he were instructed how best to bend
over and how to use his muscles. Out of this simple illus
tration has arisen the vast store of scientific time and
motion study which is now applied in every efficient fac
tory. Out of it, also, has come the practice of bringing the
work to the man rather than the man to the work; and
that most spectacular, but by no means the most crucial,
accomplishment of factory efficiency, the conveying of
materials by mechanism rather than by hand. The now-
familiar assembly chains of automotive and other factor
ies are a development of the same theory. It is this or
dered succession of machining operations, properly called
processed* manufacturing, but popularly known as
progressive machining/ which, introduced after pro
gressive assembly/ has become the foundation of the
most modern methods of mass production.

During the early years when modern efficiency was
being introduced into manufacturing, it is possible that
the automobile world as a whole was no more than search
ing out the road to its present advanced state in an effort
to counteract the rising cost of labor, but the fact that
it was seeking was something. Between 1917 and 1922 it
made giant strides of advance. Such Harvester men as
were engaged in the production of tractors and motor
trucks were in closer touch with the new methods than
were the implement builders. They were constructing an
automotive product and were already seeking to adopt
automotive methods. The motor-car factories were mak
ing no secret of their success in reducing labor cost
through labor elimination. Secretary of Commerce Her-

fc HARVESTER SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION 255

bert Hoover was urging American industry to save for
itself and for the public the terrific cost of wasteful meth
ods. The severe lessons of the extravagant post-war
years and of the 1921 depression, which forced business
men to save or fall, were fresh in the minds of all. The
public had long been intrigued by Henry Ford s succes
sive announcements of prices lowered in proportion to
rising volume. The time was ripe for the Harvester Com
pany to resume its ancient supremacy in the methods of
early mass production.

The two tractor plants, Milwaukee Works and Tractor
Works, were even then the most mechanically efficient of
the Company s factories. The production cost of the old
twin-cylinder tractor, the Titan 10-20, had long been
surprisingly low; and when the new McCormick-Deering
15-30 was introduced in 1922, every known labor-saving
device was provided for its production. When the 10-20,
a smaller companion, was brought into being at Tractor
Works a few months later, even greater strides in effi
cient manufacture were made. Most of the departments
there were on a single floor level, so the possibilities for
progressive methods were greater than at Milwaukee,
which was a reconstructed implement factory of the older
multiple-story type. It is perhaps a noteworthy tribute
to the plans then put into effect that the sale price of
these two tractors works out at less than nineteen cents
per pound of weight as compared to twenty-two cents in
the case of the cheapest automobiles in existence.

I do not wish to convey the impression that nothing
except the necessities of the depression and the tractor
war could ever have driven the Harvester Company into
improved manufacturing efficiency. As early as 1919, the
men of its automotive factories gave over their formerly
self-contained habits and traveled ceaselessly through

256 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

other plants to learn what the rest of the manufacturing
world was doing. They were by no means oblivious to the
developing progress of the automobile industry, but did
not have such large production schedules with which to
deal. Harvester engineers, too, were experiencing the
benefits of contact with automotive standards, as witness
the outstandingly original design of the two new tractors.
It is true, however, that the Company s manufacturing
staff arrived more quickly at the desired goal because
of the pressure of necessity. The same cause was also
instructive to the higher management.

Industry is a living, progressing thing. In the days of
the construction of McCormick Works and of the first
automobile factories too, for that matter it did not
occur to industrial architects not to put up multiple-story
buildings. It began at length to be apparent that a single-
story building, with its floor space spread out on one
level, would permit a simpler, and therefore more effi
cient, development of operations. Thus, Harvester s
new motor-truck plant at Fort Wayne, designed in 1920,
is principally one-story; but the production arrangements
planned at that time have since been radically improved
as the science of production planning has advanced.

The same modern manufacturing methods which were
worked out in the Company s automotive factories be
tween 1919 and 1923 have in recent years been applied
as far as practicable to the older agricultural implement
works. The implement factories have all been completely
reconditioned in the last five years. When progressive
operations were introduced into McCormick Works, for
example, all the departments were rearranged, every
piece of machinery in the plant was relocated, and in the
end the same manufacturing capacity was secured from
half the former floor area. Thus, without additional

HARVESTER SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION 257

buildings, the plant was able to take care of its share of
the greatly enlarged requirements for farm equipment
occasioned by the enlarged demands of modern times. A
member of the old staff at Springfield or Canton would
hardly recognize his former work home in the close-
pressed maze of machine tools and conveying equipment
which the new arrangement permits the ancient walls to
house. At Hamilton, two separate factories have been
consolidated into one, and a complete twine mill, re
moved from Deering, has been installed in a former plow
works. Deering itself, in its product at least, has been
changed beyond recognition and to-day houses that most
modern of all farm implements, the harvester-thresher.

Thus the many Harvester Company factories have
first caught up with, and then kept abreast of, modern
times. It is not claimed that an old, reconditioned
multiple-story plant can be made as efficient as a new,
scientifically designed one-story installation. But Har
vester s experience has proved to its own satisfaction that,
given modern methods, a complete abandonment of out
worn practices, a processed arrangement of machinery,
suitable material-handling systems, adequate lighting
and ventilating, and above all a personnel trained and
aggressive and willing to learn, an old factory can be made
efficient enough to avoid the overhead charge for new
construction.

In all of the factories there is as highly developed a
system of mass production as the volume of product will
permit. Quite obviously an implement for which there is a
trade demand of five thousand a year cannot carry the
burden of special manufacturing equipment, assembly
chains, and the like which can desirably be supported by
a production of a hundred thousand units. Harvester
makes no one article of which as many are sold as the

258 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

cheaper motor cars. If the Company s manufacturing
methods are now as efficient as those of the automobile
world, it is because it has never refused to provide
the factories with labor-saving, cost-reducing, quality-
improving machinery.

Machinery is the essential of mass production. The
successive machining and assembly operations from the
basic raw material to the finished product must be studied
in advance and so related one to another that neither time
nor effort is wasted between or during operations. Ma
terials must be conveyed to and from a machine tool so
that the operator may conserve his energy for direction.
Equipment performs the heavy labor, the workman does
the thinking. He has a brain which it cannot rival and it
has an untiring physique which he cannot match. To
gether they are unbeatable but always the process is
the servant of the man.

Mass production permits a company executive to plan
his business campaign in advance, sure in the knowledge
that, once he has provided the factory with an estimate of
requirements, the nicely balanced succession of operations
will start to function and will provide him with what he
wants at the time he wants it. The cost of production
will be lower than by the time-honored, hit-or-miss meth
ods of production, for waste will have been eliminated,
and machines, while they will wear out if unattended,
will not tire. Man will do the thinking for them, and, if
he be watchful, will see that cutters do not dull or fix
tures become displaced. Thus, mass production and its
constant appeal to brains emphasizes thought and so be
comes an instrument for answering the world s increas
ing demand for quality. It is perhaps significant that the
best quality implements are those which are produced in
the greatest numbers by the most completely progres-

HARVESTER SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION 259

sive methods. And the farmer in a faraway corner of
the world who needs a repair part for his mower or his
motor truck will find that, because of standardization,
its dimensions are exactly the same as his old part. He
puts it on and proceeds with his task.

Any such integrated system of manufacture puts a
strain not merely on the factories. What would happen if,
in the middle of a smoothly flowing mass-production pro
gram, it were suddenly discovered that the purchasing
agent had failed to provide pig iron and the foundry could
not make castings in time for the machine shop to func
tion? Or if a traffic man had failed to secure freight cars
for the day of shipment? Or if a construction engineer
was unable to complete a new building when it was
needed? Or if a designing engineer could not finish his
experimental work on a new part early enough to permit
all these other portions of the whole grand scheme of pro
duction to function in time to deliver the desired imple
ments to their future owners? In truth, the ramified
problems of mass production are many and the system
of management which can solve them is worthy. This,
American industry has done.

How much good there has been in all of this, time can
tell better than the generation that has done the job.
Harvester men are not perfect, but on the whole the
Company has been reasonably successful in its production
efforts. Much money has been spent on capital improve
ments. Production costs have been kept under control in
the face of high labor rates, quality has been improved,
manufacturing schedules have been maintained, and the
demands of farmers for an ever-increasing supply of labor-
saving, food-producing equipment have been met. The
entire scheme of production has been rebuilt or, per
haps, it is fairer to say that it is being rebuilt, for to keep

260 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

pace with the ebb and flow of business means an ever-
unrolling series of improvements. Two factories have been
entirely abandoned, due to new conditions, three have
been completely changed from one line of manufacture to
another, four new ones have been started. Production
has been integrated so that now three different tractor
models consume the energies of three factories ; twine is
spun in three places, depending on distribution; imple
ments are made in seven different factories according to
their type, and three plants are devoted to the produc
tion of collateral parts. There is a complete steel-making
installation with supporting ore and coal mines. The
various foreign affiliated companies operate ten factories
in Canada, France, Germany, and Sweden.

It has been my own personal pleasure to know that
they have one and all of them become reasonably efficient.
Only a few years ago Harvester plant superintendents and
foremen used to visit the motor centers to learn how the
outside world conducted its production enterprises. They
still travel in search of information, for when men stop
learning, they stop growing; and it is certainly true of
modern factories that an open-door policy toward visitors
gains more than it loses. But the tide has turned, and the
Harvester plants are now receiving visitors, even from
Detroit, come to learn how manufacturing should be
organized. There was a time when potential buyers of
motor trucks for city use, who knew nothing of farm de
mands for quality, used to question Harvester s ability to
manufacture up to automotive standards. But times have
changed, and the production of the instruments of power
farming demands the best manufacturing skill in the
world. The former old implement company whose
methods were once scorned by the youthful proponents of
the automobile, which was thought to understand nothing

HARVESTER SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION 261

except cast iron or lumber, and to which such niceties as
fine manufacturing limits and the heat treatment of alloy
steels were supposed to be a closed book, has changed. It
has become young and aggressive again. The efficiency of
its manufacturing methods is second to none.

If one should seek to scrutinize the Harvester produc
tion system, or indeed any other in the field of American
industry, to discover its most important element, it is
probable that management would finally be chosen. But
this is no more than another way of saying that the most
important element in business in life itself is the
human factor. Business cannot be successful unless its
personnel be sound ; and if the president of a company at
the top or common labor at the bottom be not sound, that
organization will fail. Harvester is actuated by ideals
which are great and traditional, but ideals fade if they
are not given life and reality in the hands of men. It is
fortunate for the Company that the present application
of Cyrus Hall McCormick s conception of justice and of
Cyrus H. McCormick s reiterated demand for fair play
has succeeded in providing a happy relationship between
it and its forty thousand factory workers.

The story of the Harvester Company s early excursion
into the field of welfare has been told. In 1908, when an
aggressive interest in the human problem was evinced,
the things the Company did to establish pensions, benefit
insurance, factory safety, first aid, employee stock owner
ship, and the like were a very radical departure from the
usual practice of employers. In the intervening years,
every action then taken has been proved to be sound and
has been enlarged. During the course of its history, Inter
national has paid out $7,000,000 for pensions and has
established a pension trust of $23,000,000 to protect the
old age of its faithful employees. To insure the future

262 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

integrity of pension funds, the trust has been made irre
vocable. The Employees Benefit Association, maintained
by employee subscriptions and Company contributions,
has spent nine and a half million dollars to the end of 1929
in sickness and death benefits. The record for safety
through the years is the best of any large company in the
country. The first-aid stations have become organized
hospitals, each in charge of capable medical authorities.
Employee stock ownership has progressed at such a pace
that between 1908 and 1929 no less than 800,000 shares of
stock were sold to employees of all ranks, and the end is
not yet. A new stock plan was announced in the spring of
1930, and the indications are that many more shares will
be bought by employees on the favorable terms offered.
In 1929, a highly successful plan of vacations with pay for
wage-earning employees was put into effect.

In March, 1919, there occurred an event which for all
time stamped the International Harvester Company as
one of the most forward-looking of industrial organiza
tions the adoption of the Harvester Industrial Council
Plan. This plan provided for a works council at each
plant, composed of representatives elected by the factory
employees in proportion to their number and of nominees
appointed by the management. The council was to dis
cuss and take action upon anything which affected the
well-being of the workmen, including such possibly con
troversial matters as wages, hours, and working condi
tions. Neither the management side nor the elected
representatives could outvote the other, but an appeal
to the president of the Company or to arbitrators was
provided in case of a deadlock. True to its traditional
open-shop principles, the Company published an absolute
guaranty in the plan of no discrimination against any
employee because of race, sex, political or religious affil-

HARVESTER SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION 263

iation, or membership in any labor or other organization.

This is the frame of the Magna Charta of Harvester
workmen. At first some of them regarded it suspiciously,
fearing that such an apparently munificent gift from an
employer must have some strings tied to it somewhere.
When they were called upon to vote whether or not they
would accept its terms and do business under them, most
of them agreed to give the plan a trial, but the men of
McCormick Works, largest of the factories, would have
none of it. Some of the manufacturing executives were
also opposed to its terms. They were hurt that the offi
cials of the Company had not consulted them in preparing
such a radical departure in labor policy, they did not
understand it, they feared it would affect their ability
to maintain discipline, and certain of the older men were
constitutionally opposed to any compromise with labor.
The Company s higher executives believed sincerely in
this forward step in industrial relations ; but they feared
that premature discussion would crystallize both ultra-
conservative and ultra-radical opposition. Hence the
works councils were started quietly. As a matter of fact,
this speed almost defeated the purpose.

In subsequent years a better way of introducing such a
plan was found. Like political democracy, an industrial
bill of rights must be understood in order to be appreci
ated. It was not strange that foremen who had grown up
in the old, outworn school of direct-action factory man
agement did not understand that a modern world which
was using modern machinery would also require a modern
attitude toward labor problems. They did not appreciate
the fact that the guaranty of good faith to workmen was
also inferentially a guaranty of fair and adequate man
agement, which necessarily involves the maintenance of
plant discipline. Neither they nor the first employee

264 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

representatives grasped the analogy that, just as good citi
zens support the police powers of an organized community,
so it is to the interests of the better workmen in a factory
to support the management.

Any business enterprise is an oligarchy insofar as a few
men must manage. The test of ability to direct industry
is brains. Industry must seek out brains wherever it can
find them and endow them with power. Add an inherent
belief in the doctrine of fair play and you have a complete
picture of the proper interrelation between factory man
agement and a works council. Workmen do not wish to
manage production, since they know that their superior
officers, mostly men who have risen from the ranks, have
climbed because of superior ability. But wage-earners are
interested in their own well-being, in the wages they re
ceive and the hours they work. They do not like to read
on their department bulletin board a cold notice announc
ing baldly the termination of employment and never have
a chance to learn the reason. After all, would you?

During the first several meetings of each one of the
Harvester works councils there was much hesitation and
friction. Management appointees who did not under
stand the scheme were willing to give lip service to the
plan because the Company wished it. Employee repre
sentatives were feeling out the sincerity of the Company
and trying to discover what new rights they could win for
their constituents. Much time was spent in stubborn con
tention about complaints, some of them fancied, some of
them real. But on both sides were many serious men who,
catching in the works council plan a glimpse of the future,
were trying to grope their way toward mutual benefits to
be gained for all from better industrial relations. They
persevered and they have won out.

A works council meeting now, after the years of experi-

HARVESTER SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION 265

ence and mutual growth, is no routine event, though its
business is more expeditiously transacted. There are no
appeals to the president of the Company to settle dead
locks, nor are there many debates on complaints to adjudi
cate. The employee representative has already taken up
his constituent s case with his foreman or, in want of satis
faction there, with the plant superintendent. Reasonable
men find it easy to reach reasonable and quick decisions.
The representative merely reports to the council that such
and such a decision has been agreed upon. He has learned
that the management is sincere and that the spoken word
of a Harvester man is a contract. The foreman, also, and
perhaps even the superintendent, has been promoted to
his present position, probably from the ranks, since the
introduction of the council plan. He has never done busi
ness in the old-fashioned way, or known the times when
the interests of management and men were theoretically
hostile. It is as natural for him to discuss Bill s griev
ances or Tom s unexplained absence with an employee
representative as it used to be to curse a stock chaser for
failure to provide material.

The foreman and the representative are much more
interested in what they call constructive policies than
they are in grievances of which, due partly to modern,
fair thinking about labor problems and partly to the in
fluence of the fact of works councils, there are now so few.
The vacation plan for wage-earners came out of the coun
cils, the various stock subscription plans were formulated
with their assistance, and they have been the medium
through which the men have learned much about the
economics of the business. Thus, in the dreary days of the
depression of 1921, they were brought to understand the
necessity of reducing wages, just as in other circum
stances they have also been instrumental in persuading

266 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

the management to see the necessity of wage increases.
Most difficult of all, employee representatives have been
able to learn from certain council meetings why chang
ing business conditions would compel the Company to
close for all time the factory where they had worked for
many years. In the three cases of this kind, the manage
ment and the elected representatives of the men have col
laborated to find new jobs for all of the employees. I ad
mit that such a method, new and helpful though it may
be, does not entirely solve the problem of a workman s
ever-present fear of losing his job; but at least it is better
than the former plan of posting a brusque notice that
work would stop with the end of the current day.

The Industrial Relations Department was organized at
the time works councils were introduced to father them, to
centralize and standardize employment methods, and to
represent the interest of the workers. It is now a separate
institution in theory only; for the management of labor
has become an integral part of the production system.
Harvester superintendents and foremen are human
enough to understand that workmen are not machines,
but are reasoning beings like themselves. As a matter of
fact, any one who thinks otherwise is missing the best
chance in life of a friendly association. Any one who be
lieves that none of the errors arising out of the surging
rush of production can be charged to the superintendent of
a factory fails miserably to secure the support and assist
ance of that wise individual, the American workman. So
it is that works councils are able, if they believe in the
management, to accomplish many other things: safety,
for example, the scientific setting of wage rates, and the
high quality of workmanship that comes from under
standing, not from orders.

Harvester factories have always been safe places to

HARVESTER SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION 267

work and their record before the inception of works
councils was highly satisfactory. It had been achieved by
enormous pressure from the top. Machine tools were
guarded and statistics indicated that the vast majority of
accidents were due to employee negligence. Then the
representatives took hold of the problem. A workman
can explain to a workman so much better than a foreman
can why, for his own sake, he must play safe. However
good the International Harvester Company s record for
safety may have been, it improved remarkably as soon as
the elected representatives were enlisted in the cause.
Quite incidentally it is estimated that their influence has
resulted in a direct wage saving of $3.28 a year for every
workman on the pay roll.

The interest of the works council representatives in the
system of so-called occupational rating, an elaborate
general job specification that classified the relative value
of different factory occupations, and in time-study and
other scientific methods of rate setting, has been part and
parcel of their growing and intelligent interest in the
broad system of manufacturing efficiency. Ten years ago
one would not have dared expose a time-study stop-watch
for fear of arousing opposition ; or its presence would have
been a silent signal for a workman to slow down his pace
in order, as he thought, to get a higher rate. Now, be
cause through the intervention of their own representa
tives they understand the scientific and wholesome nature
of such things, workmen welcome the time-study man.
They know he represents the efficiency department and
that efficiently organized production means not only sav
ings for the Company but higher earnings for the men.
Labor elimination means fewer men; but, unless times
are bad, the doctrine of high wages brings high consuming
power into being, and that in turn carries with it jobs for

268 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

all. Labor-saving devices mean faster production, but
they also mean less grueling work for a man s muscles,
better working conditions and more pay.

Another constructive policy much discussed at works
council meetings is the question of quality. Here the
direct benefits to workmen are more remote. Except as a
means to avoid the usual charge back for spoiled work,
quality s one appeal is for an interest in the ultimate
customer. It has been surprising to find how many work
men are ex-farmers and know the requirements of the
field. It has also been surprising to find how many other
workmen had been producing some particular piece for
years and yet did not know how it functioned or why it
had to be made just so. To-day there are show rooms in
every Harvester factory where an employee may study
his own work in place upon a complete machine. Alex
Legge said, Quality is the foundation of our business.
The answer to this challenge is perhaps to be found in the
vital interest the works council members have taken for
the past several years in the subject. The representatives
have learned how to show their constituents the way to
an intelligent interest in their jobs the quality way, the
way of building better machines for better farmers.

Under the former most excellent system of welfare
work, which could more correctly have been called in
dustrial betterment/ the many desirable schemes put into
effect were imposed from the top. A wise management did
those things which it knew were good for workmen. Under
the modern system of industrial relations, workmen have
an opportunity to do their own thinking. That, it seems
to me, is the fundamental difference between the two. It
is this that employee representatives are striving for
when they preach quality in no uncertain tones. They
are not becoming the agents of management. Rather,

HARVESTER SYSTEM OF PRODUCTION 269

they are trying to help the great body of workmen to
better themselves, to become individuals who will have
pride in their jobs to become better citizens of the
world of industry.

At the risk of invidious comparison between factories,
I mention two concrete illustrations. The McCormick
works council the men of this plant petitioned the
Company to install the council plan when they heard how
well it was operating in the other factories telegraphed
me proudly not so long ago that the third successive
month had passed without a major error of manufactur
ing quality. Six thousand men at work, and yet the in
spectors could not find one serious variance from specifi
cations! Recently, also, I had a talk with the men of the
mower department and congratulated them on building
250,000 mowers on the new progressive assembly chain
without one single complaint from the field. Is it strange
that I believe that the modern production system, both as
concerns equipment methods and the administration of
personnel, breeds quality, or that I feel that Harvester
workmen have come to take pride in their work? Is it
any wonder that I have learned to stand solidly for works
councils and that I believe that in their sincerity lies the
solution of all industrial relations problems?

Experience with the Harvester system of production
has convinced me, first, that the matter of personnel is
the most crucial subject with which a manufacturer has
to deal, and, second, that an executive in a large Ameri
can company need look no further than his own ranks for
material for the personnel of the future. It is his particu
lar task to find and train these men. This is easy if he
searches aggressively, for Americans take naturally to
instruction and are all of them potential organizers. Not
every workman can rise to the top, but when one of them

270 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

does rise it spurs others on to emulation. It makes little
difference whether a candidate for promotion is a college
man come to the manufacturing world to win his way or a
graduate of the workbench. But he must have brains;
and he must have courage to stand the competition for
preferment. It will serve him if he has shown the ability
to climb up through the ranks. Whoever and whatever
he may be, the essentially democratic manufacturing
world will accept him if he can produce. Factory work
demands men who do things and it has small patience
either with the machine or the individual that fails. It
likes to give a newcomer a chance and to instruct him.
But once he has become a part of the system, he must win
out or fall. If he wants to rise, all he has to do is prove his
ability to make good in competition with other able men
who are striving for promotion.

The opportunity to win promotion is, I think, the
greatest single factor in the American industrial system.
We are even less in danger of being caste-ridden in our
commerce than in our social life. We offer rewards to
those who can prove that they have the brains to claim
them. There is no part of industry where the competition
of man against man is keener or more able than in the
field of production. In the case of the Harvester Com
pany manufacturing and raw material properties there
are eleven general supervisory positions and thirty super-
intendencies. Of the former, only one man fills the same
position he held ten years ago and one exercises similar
but broader responsibilities. Of the other nine, five were
not even factory superintendents a decade ago. Out of the
thirty superintendents, five hold the jobs they had ten
years ago and four others were heads of less important
plants. The manufacturing game demands that men grow
quickly.

HEAT TREATING DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL
MOTOR-TRUCK WORKS, FORT WAYNE, INDIANA

FRONT YARD OF THE McCORMICK WORKS, CHICAGO

CHAPTER XV

ADMINISTRATION OF THE HARVESTER
COMPANY

IT is remarkable that during the century of the reaper,
the hundred-year period that includes within its limits
the tale of such stirring, man-made events and also the
record of such increasing service to agriculture, so few
men have guided this vehicle of achievement. Cyras Hall
McCormick initiated progress ,and then himself carried it
on until beyond its fiftieth anniversary. His son, Cyrus,
bred in his tradition and trained under his direction, car
ried his work through the stormy middle period when able
competitors sought to win away from the second genera
tion what the old lion, the founder of the business, had
established. Nettie F. McCormick, wife and mother of
these leaders, provided the link of continuity between the
generations and, because she was as able as any president,
might well have held their place. Then came the Inter
national Harvester Company, and the circumstance of his
own work held Cyrus H. McCormick, still young and
inspired by the deeds of the past and the hope of the fu
ture, in the leadership. This he retained through all the
troubled years of pioneer organization, litigation, and war
until, in 1918, he turned a secure and enlarged business
over to his brother, Harold.

It is a cardinal principle of growth that each successor
must add something to the equipment he has received
from his predecessors. Without this there would be no
development, no progress, but only decay and the slow
crumbling of achievement that ends in oblivion. Thus,
Cyrus H. McCormick enlarged uponhis father s definition

272 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

of implacable justice by extending it to the limitless term,
fair play; and he softened an inherited determination with
a restraint and a willingness to compromise which won
him many battles wherein refusal to admit the validity of
an opposing point of view would have resulted in stale
mate. Perhaps the latter of these qualities is really an
outgrowth of the former; and certainly it was his un
equivocal fairness his example of truth to all men and
in all situations which is the living root of Harvester
Spirit.

It is probable that no one with less tolerance, less per
severance, and less ability could have continued the work
of Cyrus Hall McCormick, enlarged the world-wide scope
of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, and
led the International Harvester Company through the
precarious but glowing years of its youth. It was left for
Harold, born of one leader and trained by another, to be
the third pilot on the broad seas of the reaper s destiny, to
endow the whole organization with the fruits of the most
winning of all personalities. He crowned the fine struc
ture of Harvester Spirit and made the lowest or the high
est conscious of a bond of ready, personal affection linking
Harvester men together, not so much as a team ready
for the game as in a brotherhood. A l soul-less corpora
tion may be endowed with character if the personality of
its commander permits. Under their second president,
Harvester men learned more than ever before that one of
the chief duties of a subordinate is to express himself fear
lessly about organization policies; and thus they carried
still further the development of a business character.

Then, in 1922, came Legge, the McCormick-trained
product of the Harvester ranks. He had learned to plan
when he rode alone over the Western plains, he had
learned determination as he fought his way upward in the

HARVESTER ADMINISTRATION 273

harsh days of the harvester war, he had learned how to
judge men in his contact with humanity. Farm-bred and
farm-wise, he understood farm problems as few others.
Courageous, far-seeing, able, a fighter, kind or severe as
the case deserved, worthy of respect and admiration,
every inch a leader whom men leaped to follow, Alex
Legge has been a captain whom men loved and respected,
though he might oppose them, and clamored for places
under his leadership because he never failed them. He and
the masters who preceded him were men of understanding
and ideals. An organization, no matter how good the
men who make up the rank and file, is no better than its
leader. His men take him for their inspiration, they
model their conduct on his character, they look to him for
the challenge which the ability to lead always inspires.

The internal administration of the International Har
vester Company is not inherently different from that of
other large corporations. There is, under the president,
an executive council composed of the nine chief officers.
They are at the same time representatives in the coun
cil deliberations of their own special interests and arbi
ters of general company policy. Their discussion brings
possibly conflicting, certainly individualistic opinion
to bear on all matters which, as most do, touch inter
ests other than those of a single department. It might
surprise an outsider to hear the controversies that take
place around the council table; but, since the strength of
unanimity is in action resulting from deliberation, such
of the foundation of farm implement progress as is laid
there is sure.

Plans are criticized there and strengthened, but the
ideas on which they are based frequently come from be
low. Some people say that the mental power of an execu
tive can be measured in terms of the ability of his juniors

274 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

to think. The chief usually has more experience than
the subordinate, and is able, therefore, to spur him on
to aggressive mental energy and at the same time act
as a proper check on youthful enthusiasm. Such, at all
events, is the way of the Harvester Company. The
juniors in the departments know that their suggestions
will be considered and so put up plan after plan for discus
sion, a department head studies them, and then the exec
utive council deliberates, criticizes, amends, and takes
action. When the whole cycle is complete, the scheme, if
adopted, will in all probability contain less risk as well as
more potential progress.

The main departments which direct the Company s
activities are: executive, treasury, accounting, law, and
agricultural extension; sales, stock, collections, and adver
tising; manufacturing, industrial relations, engineering,
and purchasing; and steel, fiber, traffic, patents, and con
struction. I have deliberately refrained from listing them
as they are grouped under the members of the executive
council because it is a cardinal element of Harvester
policy that there shall be no restricting or constricting or
ganization chart. The Company s activities are thought
of in terms of their object. To meet the constantly chang
ing demands of farm life, the framework must be flexible.
Also, a business group is after all nothing more than a col
lection of men, some of whom are strong and can carry
much responsibility, some of whom are weak if they are
overloaded and yet entirely adequate within a limited
sphere. Therefore, the head of the organization should at
all times be able to swing an activity from one depart
ment to another, depending upon the men available to
carry the load.

Again! say that the training of men is the chief job of
any executive. Whether he is high or low, he cannot be

HARVESTER ADMINISTRATION 275

said to be fulfilling the responsibilities placed upon him un
less he is able at any moment to nominate his own succes
sor. He is the friend and the impartial judge of all of the
men under him. He fights their battles against the world,
and at the same time creates competition for promotion
so that, when it comes time to make a choice among them,
the successful candidate will be a better man because he
has been pressed ahead by a close rival. He keeps the
narrowing funnel of candidates for promotion full by
feeding new ones in at the bottom. Some men will thrust
their heads above any crowd, but such rare individuals
are few; and yet with a little training many will prove
that they have potential brains which, when developed,
will each have a contribution to make to the whole. By
the same token he is prepared, hard though it may seem,
to weed out weak men in order to make room for strong
ones. One of the wisest of all Harvester men once said to
me, It is no sin to make a mistake and pick the wrong
man for a job, but it is a crime to leave him there after
you know he is the wrong man/ Workmen realize at
least as soon as the factory superintendent when their
foreman is weak; and a man s associates are as aware of
his faults as of his strength. The executive gains no re
spect in the minds of his subordinates if he temporizes in
matters of personnel. For the building of organization
morale, the art of dismissing inferior men is second only
to the art of promoting good ones.

Always there are men in the lower operating positions
in training for future enlarged responsibilities. Experi
ence is the fundamental of correct practice. Executive
control requires knowledge of what is happening on the
firing line. As a matter of fact the policy of traveling
abroad to study the field operation of Harvester-made
machinery has from time immemorial been an element of

276 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

the executive control of the farm implement business.
No written report can possibly convey as eloquent a mes
sage as one look at a tractor binder struggling in Alberta
wheat, no letter would ever be able to tell adequately the
story of cotton cultivation in Texas. Farm problems seem
to vary with the wind. One must go to them, study them,
let them explain themselves, before one can have any true
comprehension of agriculture or agricultural implements.
The engineers and the factory men have learned to realize
that a plow built for sandy soil will too often meet stones,
the salesmen have come to understand production condi
tions and so are able to sell and service production-made
machinery. Most of all, Harvester executives travel
abroad and get their information at first hand from the
field. They have gained much inspiration from the men
on the firing line and have brought to the far frontiers
whatever help there may be in the contact of field and
factory with the parent source of Harvester Spirit.

One of the subdivisions of the Company s activities
listed above is the Agricultural Extension Department.
No account of the century following the invention of the
reaper would be complete without a reference to it; and
yet, due to the circumstances surrounding its origin and
organization, it is impossible to discuss it in the same
breath with any of International s commercial achieve
ments. At about the time when the International Har
vester Company was first venturing into the field of wel
fare work for its employees, it occurred to Cyrus H. Mc-
Cormick that the Company might properly interest itself
in the general welfare of its chosen public, the farmers.
Accordingly a small service bureau was organized which
distributed bulletins and the like giving advice on general
farm problems. These bulletins dealt, not with any
phase of Harvester s business, but rather with the day-to-

HARVESTER ADMINISTRATION 277

day problems arising out of farm operation. So well were
they received throughout the agricultural community
that it soon became necessary to enlarge the scope of the
work, and in 1912 a separate department was organized.

The Agricultural Extension Department has no connec
tion with any of the Harvester Company s other depart
ments. It is wholly non-commercial. Its entire business
is to demonstrate and popularize good farming methods,
not farm machinery. It is an educational institution akin
to a State agricultural college, though, being both private
and nation-wide, it can attack any farm problem any
where. It is a service bureau for farmers which seeks to
increase farm production and reduce farm waste; to im
prove rural living conditions; to make the farmer more
prosperous; to help him safeguard his family s health; to
advise his wife how her housework may be made easier
and her life happier; and to instill into the minds of farm
boys and girls an enduring love for the farm and a greater
interest in the pursuit of agriculture.

Consistent with these objects, Harvester s president is
reported to have said, I believe that every company or
organization of men doing business in any community, no
matter where or how removed from the central office, is in
duty bound to do something to help build that commun
ity, aside from the things required by law or the things
beneficial to itself. The Harvester Company is a citizen
of every community in which it sells a machine, and it is
not a good citizen if it does not perform some service in
that community, the same as any citizen who lives there
would be expected to perform/

To accomplish its service functions, the Agricultural
Extension Department maintains a staff of agricultural
experts, several of them drawn from the faculties of
agricultural colleges. It provides crews of speakers and

278 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

demonstrators who conduct short courses or more ex
tensive campaigns on agricultural or home problems. It
furnishes lecturers who participate in educational or other
community gatherings and speak on agricultural sub
jects. It has prepared a great number of charts, lantern
slides, and motion-picture films, which are lent to county
agents, farmers organizations, schools, and chambers of
commerce for use in their work, or even to an individual
who exhibits a sincere desire to labor in his community for
the cause of agricultural betterment. It has published a
variety of booklets dealing with modern methods of dairy
ing, cropping, poultry, organizing farm housework, and
kindred subjects. It maintains one of the best libraries on
agricultural subjects in the country, and corresponds with
countless individual farmers who write to ask advice on
this or that particular problem. Since the department
was organized, members of the staff have spoken at 23,600
meetings to more than four and a half million people.
Seventeen million booklets have been sold at cost and its
articles have been reprinted in thousands of publications.
A million people a year see its charts and films in the hands
of other lecturers.

An important function of the Agricultural Extension
Department is the operation of several demonstration
farms. These are situated principally in the Southeastern
States, in the Northwest, and in Canada, where adverse
climatic or soil or other conditions make the perplexities
of farm life keener. These farms are not equipped with
anything not usable by, or beyond the reach of, an
average farmer in the community. The farms are chosen
with a view of proving to local agriculturists that they
can profitably work the land in their own district. In the
South, the Department s practical scientists have shown
how run-down cotton plantations may be redeemed and

HARVESTER ADMINISTRATION 279

devoted to dairy and diversified farming. In the North
west, propaganda has been spread for soil conservation
and the raising of corn and cattle. Everywhere the
demonstration farms have taught the all-important mes
sage of diversification, agriculture s insurance against the
perils of one-crop farming.

It is obvious that work of this kind is well-nigh as
important to the well-being of farmers as is that of the
State agricultural colleges. Indeed, there is the closest
cooperation between them and the department. In each
case the object is precisely similar: farm prosperity. It
may be objected that, in maintaining an extension depart
ment, the International Harvester Company is really
doing a selfish work. To be sure, the Company is laboring
to make farmers prosperous; and, since they are its prin
cipal customers, it is to be presumed that prosperity for
them will mean a greater sale of its machines. One might
as well suggest that the States maintain agricultural
colleges in order to increase the taxable assets of their
citizens. But Harvester is more interested in aiding the
welfare of farmers than in proving the impersonal nature
of its attitude toward extension work. The farmers of
the country know that it is sincere. The Company knows
that it can have no success in business unless farming is
profitable.

The Harvester Company s business is by no means out
standingly profitable. But it is a fine business. It deals
with farming, the most basic of all industries. Its prod
ucts are essential to farm production and prosperity.
It has service to render as well as goods to sell. It is no
wonder that Harvester men speak of their organization,
not as International/ but as Harvester/ There is real
pride as they let the name roll over their lips, real
gratitude as they think of the satisfaction they have

280 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

earned. They are loyal, they have ideals, they serve.
Perhaps, even to-day, in all the hurly-burly of modern
life and modern business, some of them feel as does that
old pensioner whose wife remarked the other day : l Yes,
my man always was a good carpenter. I used to beg and
plead with him for years to get away from the shop and
be a contractor and builder. He could have made a
lot more money to raise six children on. But no, he was
so in love with that old corn husker of his that he just
wouldn t leave it/

CHAPTER XVI
THE INDUSTRY OF THE FUTURE

THE scope of the farm implement industry of the future,
considered either in terms of its own success or of its
ability to keep abreast of agriculture, will depend entirely
on how f armers;solve the problems which are now, and for
several years past have been, giving them concern. Pros
perity is one matter ; the handling of prosperity is another.
It would take a bolder prophet than I to suggest the
successive steps to be taken on the road to prosperity,
but the way itself is reasonably clear. A part of this way
has lain within the chosen province of International
Harvester and its constituent units. Throughout the
years of the reaper century, they sought as they could
and in their own field to foster farm prosperity.

In the long run the industry of farming cannot but be
profitable. The population of the world is increasing and
the quantity of land is fixed. Men must eat. Such diffi
culty as there is lies in the short swing. The farm problem
is complicated by the fact that it is social as well as
economic. There are six million and more farms in the
United States, counting truck gardens as well as hundred-
thousand-acre wheat factories. These farms are occupied
by a fifth of the Nation s population. But a hundred
years ago three-quarters of our people lived by agricul
ture. Even so, the increasing population of the country
has continued to be fed and clothed with the products
of the declining number who have remained on the land,
and much has been left over for export. This, it seems, is
a correct measure of the whole-hearted effort which the
farmer has Invested in his own individual efficiency. .

282 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

The National Census gave no figures with regard to
occupations until 1850. Since that time the number of
persons gainfully employed in agriculture has doubled.
But the number engaged in all occupations has increased
six times. There are ten times as many employees in the
Nation s factories, and the staff of its transportation
system is thirty times as great as it was. The value of all
American produce has increased much more than the
ratio of one to six because of the individual and collective
efficiency which the United States offers as its best con
tribution to civilization. The ten times as many indus
trial workers eat better food than before and the army of
thirty times the previous number of transportation em
ployees is better clothed. The increasing wants of the
greatly increased numbers have been supplied by only
double the number of farmers.

The above ratios indicate that the farmer has kept fair
pace with the rate of urban efficiency. In actual numbers
those persons gainfully employed in agriculture (which
total neglects children, the hope of the future, and those
superannuated men and women whose work lies behind
them) are even now actually decreasing. In 1900 the
figure stood at less than 10,900,000, whereas in 1929 it is
estimated at 10,400,000. That is what the rapid develop
ment of farm equipment has enabled farmers to do.
With every possible aid of machinery and the telling
methods of mass production, the factory worker has
increased his annual output forty-four per cent since
1900, according to the National Industrial Conference
Board. During the same time the farmer has increased
his production forty-seven per cent. He has done so prin
cipally because he has provided himself with modern
equipment. With machinery and it was good ma
chinery, as far as it went but without any collective

THE INDUSTRY OF THE FUTURE 283

action, the advancing efficiency of the farm has equaled
the improvement in industry, aided though it was by
mass production.

In these same years there has occurred a tremendous
growth of the export trade in manufactured articles.
This has been accomplished without disturbing the con
stant advance of what is known as the American standard
of living. Efficiency has allowed American production,
either because of superior quality or ..because of a lower
price, to overcome the apparent initial advantage of a
lower European rate of wages and the Oriental problem
of a superfluity of numbers. But we have seen fit to
protect our standard of living by a high protective tariff
wall, which has availed little in the case of agriculture
because we are exporters and not even potential im
porters of the principal farm products. I do not seek
to discuss what is manifestly a controversial politico-
economic question, but it appears obvious that the an
swer to the farm problem lies, as it lay in the case of
industry, in a further reduction of the cost of production
to enable American farmers to compete for the world
markets. Farmers as a group have already invested them
selves with unexcelled efficiency. Yet their trade is lan
guishing because they have been unable to protect their
standard of living in comparison with that of the cities.

There is much real hope for the future in the possibility
of lower farm production costs. Consider only what the
harvester-thresher has done in the last ten years in re
ducing the cost of wheat-raising. Twenty-five millions
of dollars a year has been deducted from the previous
production cost of the principal crop of Kansas alone.
The inventive genius of this manufacturing generation
has done that with wheat, for most Kansas farmers use
the new implement instead of the old header. Yet there

284 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

is much talk to the effect that the same procedure can
not be employed in moister climates without injury to the
quality of the grain. Possibly so; but the International
Harvester Company and other implement manufacturers
have offered the windrower and a new principle of har
vesting to the Northwest and to Canada. Perhaps the
same principle will also serve the Eastern States.

But farms are smaller in the East and their reduced
acreage cannot usefully employ the same machinery as
the larger farms of the West. Land must be cultivated
more intensively, or for that produce which returns a
greater profit per unit. It would not serve Cuba to
abandon its traditional crop for breadstuffs, even though
Java can produce cheaper sugar. It will not serve the
Maine farmer to raise wheat any more than his brother
of the prairie States can afford to compete with Aroostook
County potatoes. The indications of cost study are that
the corn-belt farmer would best confine himself to corn
and its concomitants, leaving small grains to the dryer
districts where land is cheaper. The farmer s problem
is one of production and the cost of production.

In this connection, there has been much discussion of
what the size of the farm of the future will be. Remem
bering that the wheat-belt farmer has, with the aid of the
tractor and the harvester-thresher, succeeded in com
pletely eliminating the problem of imported harvest
labor, it may be suggested that the question of labor, or
rather its absence, will solve the matter of area. Where
Kansas used to be overrun with laborers who might or
might not want to work, the farmer and the members of
his family now take care of the cycle of the harvest. He
and his tractor can plow, harrow, and drill; or, if he be
minded to work long hours, his son can spell him driving
the iron horse. When harvest time comes, he himself will

THE INDUSTRY OF THE FUTURE 285

manipulate the combine, his daughter steers the tractor,
and his young son, who is perhaps preparing to go to
the State agricultural college in the fall, chugs up in a
motor truck to carry the grain away to the elevator or to
the bin. If, as some commentators on farm life have
stated, this is thought to be a lazy type of farming, try

it It is work, work for all, old and young, the type of

work which in the end must spell either success or be an
insolvable equation. It is a kind of work which suggests,
because of its efficient economy and freedom from waste,
that the proper size farm of the future will be one which,
by aid of machinery, a man may operate with no labor
except that of himself and his family.

The ultimate in farm equipment has by no means
been reached, even with the all-purpose tractor and its
attachments. The only thing that can ever limit the
introduction of machinery to any task is the interrelation
of the overhead charge for equipment and the reduction
of the direct labor charge to a minimum. A machine
should be asked to demonstrate its ability to pay for itself
by the savings it can make. It is, however, true that
when there appears a real demand, for a mechanical
process, in farming or in manufacturing, one will ulti
mately be supplied. Thus, a successful cotton-picking
machine will be at length devised and then there will
remain only the relatively simple problem of cotton
chopping to solve before the planter can be as free of
his labor difficulties as the wheat farmer is to-day. As
soon as that happens, he will also be able to complete his
crop by machinery, without any labor except that of
himself and his family. He will no longer have to provide
sustenance for workers who are unproductive for such a
large portion of the year. He will be master of his own
production.

286 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

There will always be some large farms. In certain dis
tricts of the world the inhabitants, lowly peasants for the
most part, are not of an intelligence to operate a system
of the kind I am describing. In other places, climate or
soil conditions may dictate a low yield per acre and
require such an expanse of territory to make a crop that
the limits of family efficiency cannot extend to cover it.
Or there may appear some particular genius at organiza
tion who can gain more for other men working with and
for him than they can earn by themselves. Also some
new process of agriculture or of agricultural equipment
may be developed to change the face of farming. Deal
ing, though, with the realm of present knowledge and with
those betterments which there is immediate reason to
anticipate, it seems to me fair to expect that the size of
American farms will for the present continue to be con
trolled by the extent of the substitution of machinery
for labor.

In the broader consideration of the cost of production
there appear to be two avenues of progress ahead. Farm
operating equipment may be improved and yields may
be increased. Far be it from me to urge overproduction
as a remedy for the ills of the farm. A business enterprise
does not willingly overproduce, and conditions will be bet
ter for agriculture if and when it is able to schedule pro
duction in terms of estimated future demand. Individual
industries have done much in this direction, but they have
by no means reached a solution applicable to all industry.
As in 1921, each feels that it will survive better than its
competitors, and there does not yet exist any industry
wide centralization of the control of total production.
There can be no permanent prosperity for factory or farm
until this problem is finally solved. Therefore, it is
enough to say for the present that, within the limit of the

THE INDUSTRY OF THE FUTURE 287

demand, agricultural scientists can do much for farmers
by developing better methods of cultivation, soil con
servation, fertilization, irrigation, transportation, and
control of insects and other pests, to say nothing of a
constant study of ordinary day-to-day methods of farm
operation. Success depends much more upon the yield
per acre than on the number of acres farmed. The
American farmer has gone far in per-man efficiency ; he
has far to go in per-acre efficiency.

The farm equipment industry is very well aware that
its future status depends entirely upon the prosperity of
the farmer. It has a greater stake in the game than the
sale of a certain number of machines built in any one
year. Its destiny is mortgaged just as surely as its past
has been dedicated. It may grow or it may shrink, but
how it develops will be according to how the world deals
with the farmer.

International Harvester and the other companies are
therefore devoting endless thought and money toward the
development of machine methods which will aid in pro
ducing the largest possible yield at the lowest possible
cost. If there were no other reason, there would be ample
justification for the formation of the International Har
vester Company in the mechanical processes which its ex
perimental effort has been able to provide. The reaper, the
mower, and the binder are the machines upon which im
plement history is founded. They spelled the initial suc
cess of agriculture, and without them the United States
could never have become the great farming country that
it is. The reaper has gone, but Cyrus Hall McCormick s
work is still apparent in the successive machine genera
tions that have arisen from his thought. His first crude
implement is now to be interpreted not merely as a page
of past history. Its spirit is alive to-day in its heirs

288 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

in the harvester-thresher which is its lineal descendant,
in the tractor which is the legitimate offspring of the
reaper s substitution of mechanism and power for the
puny efforts of an unaided arm, and in the plows and cul
tivators and legion of machines which are the collateral
children of the idea that, in 1831, produced the first
farm machine.

Yet our generation must never think that the tale of
progress has been told. What does it count in the last
analysis if, by means of the most recent machinery com
bined with a supply of controllable power, the implement
companies have found ways and means of increasing the
per-man production and reducing the cost accordingly?
The farmer has not yet done enough the companies
have not yet done enough. New materials must be found,
lighter and cheaper than those with which we now have
to deal ; unknown methods of reducing wear and increas
ing the life of machinery must be explored and made
practical ; undreamed-of methods of manufacturing must
be devised to reduce still further the price of equipment;
new tools must be invented to reduce time and decrease
cost. What if the price of an agricultural implement is
less per pound than that of an ordinary cookstove; or if
a tractor is relatively less expensive than an automobile,
and if its life, measured in terms of the work it does, is
longer? Let us immediately begin to try to plan some
thing better. What if gasoline is so cheap that many
users of tractors do not bother to use the slightly cheaper
kerosene? There are still the interesting possibilities of
the combustion qualities of fuel oil to investigate; or
there is industrial alcohol which might be made on the
farm from vegetable refuse. Or, if imagination be per
mitted to run further afield into the realm of the im
possible/ there is wireless transmission of electric power

THE INDUSTRY OF THE FUTURE 289

controlled lightning which might some day actuate
moving machinery at the wave of a wand.

Such things are chimerical but they are not one whit
more imaginary than were the mechanical visions of
Jules Verne or than the tractor was before the reaper was
invented. Who will discover them, none knows. Appleby
devised the twine binder when McCormick would have
given half of his reaper kingdom to have been its dis
coverer. The International Harvester Company is spend
ing millions on experimental improvements preparing for
the future. It will continue to do so as long as the farmer
marches on.

Perhaps those certain but now unseen steps ahead in
agricultural machine progress will come from the farm
itself and not from any of the organized centers of imple
ment research. (Do not forget that the reaper was born
on a farm !) The farmer is a very much improved type of
mechanic from what he was twenty, thirty, or forty
years ago. Many of the old tales of former field experts
have to do with fixing a complaining farmer s mental
attitude with honeyed words, then banging loudly and
innocuously with a hammer on some guiltless piece of
iron, and announcing that the job was done. As a matter
of fact, it was done ; for complaints were frequently more
fancied than real and were too often due to the operator s
own ignorance, of which it would have been tactless to
advise him. The advent of the farmer-owned motor car
and of the tractor changed that. Out of them farmers
got a first grip on the principles of machine operation.
Through breakdowns on the road or in the field, far from
help, they learned because they had to. Next came the
war when perhaps two million farm boys, whether they
got to the front or not, were trained by the Government
in some mechanical trade or other. They returned home

290 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

to discover that a tractor was preparing to do the work
of the old teams ; and with it they were able immediately
to put their new knowledge into practice.

A by-product of this mechanical education has been
Its effect on the quality of farm machinery. While there
never has been a time when anything would get by,
there is no doubt that former standards of excellence
would be considered insufficient to-day. The result of
automotive experience and of army trade schools has
been that the critical opinion of farmers has advanced
as rapidly as the implement companies have been able
to improve their product. Thus, the farm equipment
operators of the new generation have not only been in a
position to demand more of the men who sold them ma
chinery, but, by the same token, have been able to give
better attention to the machinery they bought. Where it
was once customary for a farmer to call for expert assist
ance to adjust a knotter-head or the compressor spring
on a binder (in all probability he could not have diag
nosed the trouble himself, but merely thought that the
damn thing was rotten and no good ), it is now rare for
him to ask for help except in major difficulties. When a
machine, whether a tractor or a power-driven disk har
row, has been started by the dealer or the company
expert, the farmer usually keeps it in shape himself.

This farmer of to-day is also far better grounded in
the science of agriculture than he used to be. The time
was when theory was second, but to-day there are thou
sands of eager students in the agricultural colleges.
They are all farm boys and girls, come there to learn the
principles of better agriculture. Too many of them go
thence to the cities, where it is thought that a college
degree is a passport to riches; but many return to their
homes and take up the work for which their State has

THE INDUSTRY OF THE FUTURE 291

tried to fit them. The 4-H Clubs all over the land are a
primary training ground where farm boys and girls may
learn better ways of farm usefulness. I think it is safe to
say that if the city dweller gave such assiduous attention
to the underlying theory of accountancy, banking, and
what not as the modern farmer gives to the science of
farming, theoretical as well as practical, we should be
living in a more efficient world.

The agricultural implement industry of the future is
tied inseparably to such men as these. Their duty is to
raise those products which feed and clothe the world.
Its duty is to serve their need for the tools of their trade.
American farming stands in the lead largely because of
the native intelligence of American farmers. Here is no
peasantry, enslaved for generation after generation to the
soil and to exhausting labor. Here is an upstanding man.
Why not be glad to serve him? The city is not necessarily
opposed to the country just because it manufactures the
shoes, clothes, tractors, automobiles, and radios which
the country buys; nor does the farmer have to oppose
urban interests to sell his produce. In reality we are one
community.

Since Cyrus Hall McCormick demanded quality work
manship of his factory because he understood farm needs,
the men who have been proud to deal with the reaper
and its heirs have regarded their lives as dedicated to a
service. I know that Harvester men are happier when
they hear that the machine they have made has been
sold, and that the metal they have fused with their hope
and beaten with the hammer strokes of their existence
has been put to work. When they sell it, they are not
satisfied until they see it in a field, doing the labor of men
who would otherwise be weary and overburdened and
serving scantily the world s demand for bread.

292 THE CENTURY OF THE REAPER

Harvester s course is a hundred years old and Har
vester men are celebrating the centennial of him who
first taught machinery to serve. It is young, for its tradi
tion is strong and forward-looking. Times and condi
tions, life itself, are changing and the world is demanding
new contributions from us, the new servants of its des
tiny. The age of individualism has passed and the age of
collectivism is here. We cannot hope to be pioneers, be
cause the foundation and framework of our economic and
social life have already been constructed. We are inheri
tors in a triumphant succession. But if we cannot build
life, we can enhance it: we, too, can learn to serve.

We have problems to meet that are not so new as those
of the pioneers, but yet are more complicated. Our fore
fathers created little enterprises that have grown into
huge industries. Our work is so to manage and develop
them that they shall continue to march step for step with
civilization, never lagging behind in the theory or the
practice of producing to meet social needs. Their prob
lem was the production of ideas; our problem is the
application of known facts in a broader way. Their task
was to conceive; ours is to organize and carry out. If we
of to-day are more efficient, it is because we have the
benefit of their work; if ours is a wider sphere, it is be
cause we inherit the results of their pioneering; if we
build higher, it is because they builded the foundation
deep and wide; if we are nearer the ultimate of human
happiness, it is because they, the lonely and uplifted
pioneers of all our modernity, pierced the age-old barrier
and opened the door for us into a limitless field of
directed endeavor, of definite achievement, of ordered
and organized progress.

THE END

INDEX

INDEX

Accidents to employees, financial
relief provided for, 136

Advertising, the beginning of modern,
in McCormick s methods, 33, 43-
47; broadening of methods of, 99;
is now a specialized science, 231

Africa, trade of International Har
vester Co, with, 122, 244, 245

Agricultural Extension Department,
Harvester Co., 276-79

Agriculture, before the time of Mc-
Cormick, 4, 5, 13; and industry, 4;
in Egypt, 12, 13; in isolated and
backward communities of the
present clay, 14; self -dedication of
McCormicks to cause of, 142, 143;
European, more provincial than
American agriculture, 224; num
bers engaged in, 281, 282; the
farmer s acquaintance with the
science of, 290, 291

All-purpose tractor, 209-12, 219

American Harvester Co., formation
of, 107, 1 08; death of, 108, 109

American manufacturing system,
depends upon standardization and
mass production, 41

Anderson, Jo, Negro slave, I, 2, n

Antipodes, trade of International
Harvester Co. with, 122

Appleby, John F,, produces twine
binder, 70, 71, 92

Argentine, the tractor in, 158;
harvester-thresher in, 245

Atkins, Jearum, his Iron Man
machine, 64

Auburn Works. See Osborne Works

Aultman-Miller Co., of Akron, Ohio,
bought by International Harvester
Co., 123, 124

Australia, the tractor in, 158; Har
vester service in, 244, 245

Austria, McCprmick s reaper in, 56;

the tractor in, 158
Auto buggy, 124
Automobile industry, discovers that

price of labor and labor cost differ,

253, 254
Avery, B. F., of Louisville, 185

Bancroft, Edgar A., 171

Beam, heat-treated, 220

Behel, his idea for the knotter, 71

Bell, worked on problem of reaper,

955

Benefit insurance, 261
Bessemer, Sir Henry, his invention iix

^steel, 3

Binder, wire, 69, 204; twine, 70, 71,
204; steel, 92; Mow-down corn,
92; right-hander, 93; average
yearly sale of, before 1902, 121;
compared with harvester-thresher,
213, 214

Binder twine, Deering anticipates
McCormick in making, no; failure
of Harvester Co. in, 122, 123, 129,
130; made in Harvester Co. s
Works in Sweden, Germany, and
France, 133; sisal fiber for, 176;
sale of, 201
Bindlochine, 92
Blockmen, 227-29
Branch advertising man, 231
Branch houses, 227; the staff of, 232
Branch manager, the, 227; his force of
field experts, 228; his assistant, 230;
duties of, 230; is the general agent
of the past, 231; has assistance of
branch advertising man, 231
Branch warehouses, 233-36
Bread riots, in New York in 1837
British spinners, make first effort at
industrialization, 38

296

INDEX

Brockport manufacturers. See Sey
mour and Morgan

Buckeye mower, 60

Bull Tractor Co., 159

Burrall s reaper, 46

Burt, D. R-, 229

Butler, E. K., general manager of the
McCormick Co., and then of the
American Harvester Co., 108

Canada, as tractor market, 156;

Harvester Co. in, 243
Canton Works, 192
Canvassers, 227
Capital and labor, 135
Carpenter, S. D., preaches doctrine of

mechanical binding, 68, 7 1
Case (J. I.) Threshing Machine Co.,

193

Cellini, Benvenuto, 40

Central Europe, trade of Interna
tional Harvester Co. with, 122

Champion, and McCormick, 101,
103-05; and the International Har
vester Co., 117

Champion lines, sold by Harvester
Co. in accordance with consent de
cree of 1918, 171, 180, 185

Champion Works (Springfield), re
tained by Harvester Co. at sale of
Champion lines, 186

Chattanooga Plow Co., 191

Chattanooga Works, 192

Chicago, in 1847, 28; in 1884, 86

Chicago Daily Journal, its article
on The Magic Machinery, 37,
42

Chicago Fire, 51, 73-75

Chicago Times, owned by Mc
Cormick, 8 1

Chicago Tribune, quotation from, 42

Chile, nitrates of, 176

China, farm power in, 244, 245

Chopin, Fr6de"ric Francois, 7

Civil War, the, 62, 63, 80

Cleveland, Pres. Grover, and the
railway strike, 135

Collection manager, 232

Columbian Exposition (1893), 94

Commercial methods, and modern
inventions, 41. See also Industry

Compensation, for accidents to em
ployees, 136

Competition, 94-107, 193-201, 270

Conger, Col. A. L., president of
Whitman, Barnes Co., 108

Continuity of employment, 138

Contracts, commission, 239, 240

Corn binders, low-down/ 92; Mc
Cormick and Deering, 94-96; made
by Harvester Co., 145

Corn husker, 145, 147

Corn lister, 189

Corn pickers, 145, 147, 219

Corn planters, 146, 189, 219

Corn sheller, 145, 147

Cost plus war production, 175

Cotton-gin, invention of, 3

Cotton-picking machine, 285

Cotton planters, 219

Couchman, of International Har
vester Co., 144

County agents, 98

Cradle, invention of, 14; use of, 14,
29; use of, in Great Britain, 55

Crance, R. T., of Chicago, 74

Cream separators, introduced by
International Harvester Co., 121,
124, 125, 130, 145, 147

Credit manager, 232

Credit system, introduced by Mc
Cormick, 33, 5-5 2

Cromwell, Oliver, his intellect, 84

Crystal Palace Exhibition (1851),

55

Cultivators, introduced by Inter
national Harvester Co., 121, 124,
146; walking, 188; multiple-row,
210, 219

Cutter-bar serrations, post-invention
improvement of reaper, 57

Darwin, Charles, 7

Dealer, the, 226, 227, 236-42

Deere, John, inventor of the steel

plow, 65, 66

Deere (John) Plow Co., 193
Deering, William, builds twine

INDEX

297

binder, 70, 71 ; experiments on The
Prairie Chicken/ 93; chairman of
board of directors of American
Harvester Co., 108, 109; member
of voting trust of International
Harvester Co,, 118

Deering Co., and McCormick Co.,
rivalry of, 94-112; and the In
ternational Harvester Co., 117;
branches of, in Odessa and South
America, 244

Deering corn binder, 94-96

Deering ore leases, 128

Deering Works, under International
Harvester Co., 131, 132

Democracy, experimental, 31

Demonstration farms, 278, 279

Densmore s reaper, 46

Depression, in years following 1920,
176-80

Disk harrows, 124; with heat-treated
disks, 220

Distribution, earlier methods of,
94-98; present methods of (Har
vester Co.), 226-46. See also Ad
vertising

Drills, multiple, 253

Dr hiking-fountain, 137

Dumping, 183, 184

Edgar, of International Harvester

Co., 144

Edmonton, Harvester Co. at, 243
Efficiency, 205; and environment,

137, 138; modern, 251-55, 261; of

the farm, 281-83
Egypt, plagues of, 5; agriculture and

agricultural implements in, 12, 13,

244
Emerson-Brantingham Co., 185, 186,

193
Employee stock ownership, 261, 262,

265

Employees, welfare of, I35~39- $ ee
also Welfare work

Employees Benefit Association, es
tablished by International Har
vester Co., 136, 262

Ensilage cutters, 146, 147

Environment, influence of, on effi
ciency, 137, 138

Executive, training of men the chief
job of, 274, 275

Exhaust systems, 137

Experimental work, 147-50

Expositor, owned by McCormick, 81

Factories, in 1850, 41; of the Har
vester Co., 251, 255-58, 260; ma
chine methods in, 253-55; multi
ple-story and single floor, 255, 256

Factory hospitals, 137

Factory safety, 261

Famine, in Europe, 5; and popula
tion, 5

Farm credits, 50-52

Farm equipment, the ultimate in,
285, 287; possible future improve
ments in, 288, 289

Farm implement retailers, the first,
48

Farm prosperity, importance of, 194

Farmall (or all-purpose) tractor,
209-12, 219

Farmers, self -dedication of Mc
Cormick to cause of, 142; wheat,
189; corn-belt, 190; grass, 190;
cotton, 190; rice, 190; potato, 190;
beet, 190; standard of living of,
283; their problem, one of produc
tion and the cost of production,
284; mechanical knowledge of,

289, 290; scientific knowledge of,

290, 291

Farming, in the years of depression
following 1920, 178; in the East
and in the West, 284. See also
Agriculture

Farms, in United States, 281; the
future, probable size of, 284-86

Farwell, John V., of Chicago, 74

Fiber, sale of, by International
Harvester Co., 121; cost of, 176

Field, Marshall, 51

Field and Leiter, of Chicago, 74

Field locomotive, 154

Field tests, 94, 95, 100-02

First aid, 137, 261, 262

298

INDEX

Flax, not adapted to make binder
twine, 123, 129, 130

Ford, Henry, his tractor (Fordson),
161-63, 195-201; his announce
ment of prices lowered in propor
tion to rising volume, 255

Foreign trade, discovered by Mc-
Cormick, 54; of the International
Harvester Co., 122

Fountain Brothers, sell reapers in
competition with McCormick, 34

Fowler, Nancy (Nettie) , became wife
of Cyrus McCormick, 82. See also
McCormick, Mrs. Cyrus Hall

France, McCormick s reaper in, 56;
Harvester Co. s Works at Croix,
133; the tractor in, 158; Harvester s
machines in, in the War, 173

Fulton, Robert, inventor of the
steam-boat, 3

Funk, C, S., 140

Gammon, E. H., in control of Marsh
factory at Piano, 70

Gas engine, 154

Gasoline, used in tractors, I54""57

General agent, the, 227, 230, 231

Germany, Harvester Co. s Works at
Neuss, 133; Harvester s machines
in, in the War, 173

Gladstone, W, E., 7

Glessner, J. J., in partnership with
Warder, 64

Gold, discovery of, in California, 29

Gordon, J. H., his idea of packer
cranks, 71

Gordon case, 92

Gorham, Marquis L., his principle of
the automatic trip, 71; patents, 92

Gorham, Mrs. Marquis L., 92

Grain binders, 19, 145, 148; com
posite type of (McCormick-
Deering), 187

Grain drills, 146

Gray, in partnership with Mc
Cormick, 28, 34

Gray and Warner, of Chicago,
licensed to build McCormick
reapers, 28

Great Britain, use of cradle in, 54,
55; efforts to solve problem of
reaper in, 55; McCormick reaper
wins prizes in, 55, 56; progress of,
in mechanized harvesting, 56;
trade of International Harvester
Co. with, 122; Harvester s ma
chines in, in the War, 173

Greeley, Horace, on the reaper s vic
tory in Paris, 56; McCormick a
friend of, 80; on use of steam power
by the farmer, 153

Guild system. See Trade Guilds

Hager, A. G., traveling agent for
McCormick reaper, 47

Hall, Mary Ann, daughter of Patrick
Hall, wife of Robert McCormick,
and mother of Cyrus Hall Mc
Cormick, i, 6, 7. See also Mc
Cormick, Mrs. Robert

Hall, Patrick, 7

Hamilton, Ontario, International
Harvester Co. begins new plant at,
129

Hand grenades, 175

Haney, of International Harvester
Co., 144

Harrows, introduced by International
Harvester Co., 121, 124, 146

Hart, C. W., engineer, 155

Hart- Parr tractor, 157, 194

Harvest, fifteen years ago and to-day,
compared, 214, 215

Harvester, invention of, 67, 68, 75;
right-hand, 93; push type of, 145;
resulted from the reaper, 204

Harvester Industrial Council Plan,
262

Harvester-thresher, of 1931, 18, 146;
the large, 212; the light, 212, 213;
use of, 214-19; lineal descendant
of the reaper, 288

Harvester war, 94-107, 109, no, 118,
121, 126, 128

Harvesting machines, old-line, 121,
128; new-line, 121, 193

Hay presses, 145, 146

Hay rakes, no, 145

INDEX

299

Hay tedder, 145

Haymarket Riot, 89, 135

Header, the, 145, 151, 213, 214

Header-binder, 213

Hemispherical map, constructed by
McCormick, 8

Hempbrake, invention of Robert
McCormick, 21

High Cost of Living, after the War,

1 I75> 176

Hillside plow, invention of Mc
Cormick, 8, 21, 44

Hoover, Herbert, Secretary of Com
merce, 184, 255

Horse, decline of the, 206-08; where
he still lives, 221

Howe, Elias, inventor of the sewing-
machine, 3

Hubbard, H, G., traveling agent
for McCormick reaper, 47

Hussey, Obed, reaper patented by,
20; McCormick s controversies
with, 23-25, 27, 34; his reaper in
England, 55, 56; his reaper as
mower, 60 ; references to, 44, 46

Hutchinson, Prof. William T., his de
scription of the McCormick Works,
37; quotations from, 48, 49, 62

Hyde, Secretary of Agriculture, 184

India, farm power in, 244, 245
Individualism, fostered by the guild
system, 40, 41 ; fostered by power
farming, 223; uncertainty of, 242
1 Industrial betterment. See Welfare

work
Industrial Relations Department,

266

Industry, development of, 38-42;
modernism in, 41; and manu
facturing efficiency, 43; has been
America s leading contribution to
modern civilization, 247; Ameri
can, source of, 248; and machinery,
248, 249; and mass production, 259
Insurance, benefit, 261
Interchangeability of parts, 42
Interior, The, religious newspaper,
bought by McCormick, 79

Internal combustion, principle of,

205

Internal combustion engines, 154
International Exposition in Paris

(1855), 56

International Harvester Co., 51;
formation of, 94, 99, 114-19; bene
fits expected from, 116; benefits
resulting from, 116, 126, 127; vot
ing trust, 1 1 8, 120; early troubles
of, 119-21; volume of business dur
ing first ten years of, 121; intro
duces new-line machines, 121,
193; its foreign trade, 122, 131;
companies acquired by, 122-24;
develops new lines of agricultural
equipment, 122-25, 130, 131, 145,
146; attacks problems of vertical
integration, 128; produces steel,
128; exploits ore mines, 128; builds
plant at Hamilton, Ontario, for
Canadian requirements, 129; fail
ure of its effort to make binder-
twine from American-grown flax,
129, 130; distribution of products
between its plants, 130, 131; and
mass-production, 131, 132; its for
eign Works, 133; its interest in
welfare and industrial relations,
133-39, 261; the Spirit, 141-44,
183, 244-46, 272, 276; its full
line/ 146, 150, 189-91; its experi
mental work, 147-50; its double
sales arrangements, 150, 151;
manufactures tractors, 155-63;
develops exports of tractors, 158;
early skepticism of farmers toward,
164; attacked as dangerous trust, 1
165; charges against, proven false,
165, 166; suits brought against,
166-72, 180-83; compelled to sell
Osborne, Champion, and Mil
waukee lines, 171, 1 80, 185; its
service in the World War, 173,
175; its losses in Europe as result
of the War, 173, 174; in the years
of depression following 1920, I77~
80; accused of dumping/ 183, 184;
effect on, of single-dealer require-

300

INDEX

ment of court decree, 1 86, 187;
institution of McCormick-Deering
line, 1 88; takes on plows, 188, 189,
191; buys Parlin and Orendorff
Co., 1 88; buys Chattanooga Plow
Co., 191; competitors of, 193-201;
recovery of, 201-03; matures the
power take-off and the all-
purpose tractor, 209; its distribut
ing system, 226-46; its ideal of
service, 241-43, 251; in Canada,
243; its system of production,
247-69; its factories, 255-58, 260;
importance of management in its
production system, 261 ; introduc
tion of works councils by, 262-69;
4 occupational rating, 267; the
question of quality discussed by
, works councils, 268, 269; its per
sonnel, 269, 270; internal admin
istration of, 273, 274; Agricultural
Extension Department of, 276-79;
loyalty of Harvester men to, 279,
280

International Harvester Corporation,
171

Invention, created by new demands,

39

Inventions, change wrought in com
mercial methods by, 41

Iron, McCormick s industry in, 21;
collapse in price of, in panic of
1837, 21

1 Iron Man r machine, 64

Isthmian Canal, 81

Japan, motor-truck in, 245

Jobbers, 244

Johnston, of International Harvester

Co., 144
Jones, W. E., in partnership with

McCormick, 29

Kemp manure spreader, bought by
International Harvester Co., 123,

145

Kerfoot, W. D., of Chicago, 74
Kerosene, as fuel, 157
Kerosene Annie/ 157

Ketchum, William F., builds reapers

in competition with McCormick,

34; his mower, 46, 60
Keystone Co., of Rock Falls, 111.,

bought by International Harvester

Co., 123

Keystone hay tool, 145
Knife grinder, 145

Labor and capital, 135

Labor cost, 252, 254

Legge, Alexander, general manager

of International Harvester Co.,

140, 142, 144, 179, 196, 199, 202,

245, 268, 272, 273
Lexington, Va., McCormick makes

trial of reaper at, 19, 20
Lexington Union, first advertisement

of the reaper in, 43
Lincoln, Abraham, 7; counsel for

Manny in McCormick suit, 62;

his intellect, 84
Lister, the first, 67
Loaders, 147
Lobogreika, Russian reaper, 133,

174

Local agents, 48, 226
Locke, his inventions, 71
London Times, jibes at McCormick s

reaper, 55, 56

McCormick, Cyrus Hall, demon
strates the reaper, 1-3; agricul
ture before the time of, 4; his
ancestry, 6; his inherited and
acquired qualities, 7; his birth-
year, and place of birth, 7; his
schooling, 7, 8; early inventions
of, 8, 21; possibly helps father
in attempts to build mechanical
reaper, 8, 9; invents reaper, 9-11;
made real contribution to well-
being of the world, II, 16; the aim
of his striving, 15; the shop in
which he invented the reaper, 15;
patents reaper, 19, 20; makes ef
forts to improve reaper, 19, 20;
lays aside reaper temporarily, 20,
21 ; engages in making pig iron, 21 ;

INDEX

301

in panic of 1837, 21; and Robert
McCormick, understanding be
tween, 21, 22; resumes work on
reaper, 22; his controversy with
Hussey, 23-25; travels to New
York and the West, 25; contem
plates moving business to the
West, 26; sells a license to Sey
mour and Morgan, 26; moves to
Chicago, 26, 28; loses application
for patent extension on reaper, 27,
34; his success in Chicago, 28, 29;
rides over the plains, 30; qualities
of> 31 3 2 ; was an inventor of
modern business, 33; a pioneer of
mass production and waste-saving
methods, 33; became the leading
industrialist of his generation, 35;
growth of his business due to skill,
boldness, and business acumen, 35;
sees that every machine is built in
his own factory, 35; his factory of
1848 described, 36; his factory the
root of modern American business
system, 41-43; his insistence upon
4 quality, 43; his advertising meth
ods, 43-47; his traveling agents and
local agents, 47-49; his credit sys
tem, 50-52; summary of his inno
vations, 52, 53; aims at foreign
trade, 54; made corresponding
member of the Legion of Honor,
57; made member of Institute of
France, 57; wins suit against
Seymour and Morgan, 61 ; loses in
suit against Manny, 61; in the
years following 1848, 62; builds
harvesters, 68; builds wire binders,
69; builds twine binders, 71 ; promi
nent in the rebuilding of Chicago,
73; builds new Works, 74, 75; new
methods employed by, 76, 77; his
welfare work, 77, 78; his interest in
church affairs, 78, 79; his corre
spondence, 79, So; his interest in
governmental affairs, 80 ; his in
terest in public affairs, 80, 81;
Chicago newspapers owned by, 81 ;
generous of counsel, 81, 82; his

marriage, 82; his activity, 82-84;
his lawsuits, 84, 85; his personal
enemies, 85; the pioneering spirit
of, 85-88; death, 90; his tolerance
toward the problems of humanity,
139; was a pioneer when pioneering
was needed, 140; his self -dedica
tion to the cause of agriculture,
142; his influence a vital force in
upbuilding of early American in
dustry, 249

McCormick, Mrs. Cyrus Hall (nee
Fowler), 82; McCorrnick s letters
copied by, 83 ; as a business woman,
91, 271; loved by all, in; her zeal,
142

McCormick, Cyrus H., son of Cyrus
Hall McCormick, chosen president
of the McCormick Harvesting
Machine Co., 90; buys Gorham
patents, 92; settles Gordon claim,
92 ; experiments on freak machines,
92-94; insistent for private field
tests and public trials, 94; his
warfare, 101; and Champion, 101,
103-05; president of American
Harvester Co., 108; a conversation
with Deering, 109; seeks aid of
Morgan, in, 113; member of
voting trust of International Har
vester Co., 118; his interest in wel
fare of employees, 139; his stand
ard of harmony and coordination,
140; quoted on the Harvester Co. s
first ten years, 141; dedicated his
life to the advancement of agricul
ture, 142, 143; contribution of, to
Harvester, 271

McCormick, Harold, son of Cyrus
Hall McCormick, 109, 140, 143,
179, 271, 272

McCormick, J. B., traveling repre
sentative for McCormick reaper,

47
McCormick, Leander J., brother of

Cyrus Hall McCormick, sent by
Cyrus to Cincinnati, 26, 78; plant
superintendent in McCormick
Works, 38

302

INDEX

McCormick, Robert, son of Thomas,
6; weaver and farmer, 7

McCormick, Robert, son of Robert
and father of Cyrus Hall McCor
mick, 1,6; activities of, 7; his at
tempts to build mechanical reaper,
8-1 1 ; inventions of, 21; in panic of
1837, 21; and Cyrus McCormick,
understanding between, 21, 22;
the farmers view of, 142

McCormick, Mrs. Robert (Mary
Ann Hall), ir, 15, 142

McCormick, Thomas, migrates to
America (1734), 6

McCormick, William, brother of
Cyrus Hall McCormick, letter of,
to Cyrus McCormick, 35, 62;
Cyrus McCormick s letters to, 80

McCormick corn binder, 94-96

McCormick-Deering line, 187, 188,
192

McCormick Harvesting Machine
Co., Cyrus H. McCormick chosen
president of, 90; and Deering Co.,
rivalry of, 94-112; and the In
ternational Harvester Co., 117;
branches of, in Odessa and South
America, 244

McCormick, Ogden & Company, 29,
44

McCormick Works, 36; the new, 75,
76; strike at, 89, 90; under In
ternational Harvester Co., 131,
132

McDowell, Col. James, friend of
McCormick, u

Machinery, and industry, 248; fun
damental principles of production
by, 249, 250; in factories, 253-55;
is the essential of mass production,
258

McHugh, William D., lawyer, 171

McKinstry, of International Har
vester Co., 144

Malleable castings, no

Management, importance of, in
production system, 261

Manchuria, Harvester service in,
244, 245

Mann, H. F., sells reapers in compe
tition with McCormick, 34

Manning, worked on problem of
reaper, 10

Manny, John H., his mower, 46, 60 ;
wins patent suit from McCormick,

Manure spreader, 123, 125, 145

Marsh boys, 101; inventors of the
Harvester, 67, 68

Mason, Roswell B., Mayor of Chi
cago at time of Chicago Fire, 74

Mass distribution, a pioneer of, 33

Mass production, McCormick a
pioneer in, 33; its part in American
manufacturing systems, 41; the el
ements of, 41; the elements of,
devised in McCormick s factory,
4 1 "43, 76, 77; under International
Harvester Co., 131, 132; designed

to lessen cost, 222; foundation of
modern methods of, 254; machin
ery is the essential of, 258; ramified
problems of, 259

Massey-Harris of Canada, 173, 193

Massie, Capt. William, friend of
McCormick, n

Matron, the, 137

Medill, Joseph, of Chicago, 74

Mendelssohn, Moses, 7

Mexico, the tractor in, 158

Miller, Lewis, his mower (Buckeye),
60

Milwaukee Harvester Co., 113, 117,
123, 124

Milwaukee lines, sold by Harvester
in accordance with consent decree
of 1918, 171, 180, 185, 186

Milwaukee Works, 163, 255

Minneapolis-Moline Power Imple
ment Co., 194

Minnie Harvester Co., bought by
International Harvester Co., 123;
plant, 129

Model cottages, 78

Moline, buys Milwaukee line, 186,
194

Morgan, J. P., 115

Morgan (J. P.) & Co., in, 113

INDEX

303

Morse, Samuel Finley Breese, in
ventor of the telegraph, 3

Motor cars, for pleasure, 145

Motor trucks, 124, 145, 147; an in
strument of power farming, 221;
personnel, 229, 230

Mower, progenitor of, 24; Manny s,
46, 60; Kctchum s, 46, 60 ; the
first McCormick, 59; early at
tempts, 59, 60; Hussey s, 60;
Buckeye, 60 ; Osborne s, 64; Mc-
Cormick center-draft, 92; Cham
pion^, 102; average yearly sail of,
before 1902, 121; made by Har
vester Co., 133, 145, 146; wheel-
less, attached to tractor, 220

Mower-frame boring machine, 131,
253

Nagel, Charles, Secretary of Com
merce and Labor, 184

Napoleon, his activity, 83

New lines, 1,45, 146

New York Tribune, Horace Greeley
in, 56

New Zealand, Harvester service in,
244, 245

Nitrates, 176

Occupational rating, 267

Odessa, McCormick branches at, 244

Office manager, 232

Ogden, William B., in partnership

with McCormick, 28, 29, 34
Ogle, worked on problem of reaper,

io,55

Ohio Manufacturing Co., Upper San-
dusky, Ohio, 155
Old lines, 145, 146
Oliver, James, his plow, 66, 67
Oliver Farm Equipment Co., 194
Ore mines, the exploitation of, 129
Orendorff, William, becomes partner

of William Parlin, 67
Organization, birth of, 39; advance
ment of, 39, 40

Osborne, D. M., his mower, 64; set
tlement of claim of, 92
Osborne (D. M.) & Co., of Auburn,

N.Y., bought by International
Harvester Co., 122

Osborne lines of tillage implements,
145; sold by Harvester in accord
ance with consent decree of 1918,
171, 180, 185

Osborne Works (Auburn Works),
retained by Harvester at sale of
Osborne lines, 186

Otto, inventor, 154

Otto internal combustion engine of
1876, 154

Painting tanks, 77

Palmer, Potter, of Chicago, 74

Panic of 1837, 21

Parlin, William, his plow, 67

Parlin & Orendorff Co., 188

Parr, C. H., engineer, 155

Part-time operations, 116

Patent law, a rule of, 1 8

Pension systems, for employees, 138,
139, 261, 262

Perkins, George W., of J. P. Morgan
& Co., secures consolidation of
harvester companies, 113-19

Perkins, H. P., of International Har
vester Co., 144

Philippines, Harvester service in,

244. 245

Pig iron, McCormick engages in
making of, 21

Pioneer spirit, the, 85-87

Pitt, worked on problem of reaper, 9

Plagues, of Egypt, 5

Piano Co., and the International
Harvester Co., 117, 123

Planters, 146

Plow, hillside, 8, 21, 44; in Egypt,
12, 13; as symbol in Egyptian
alphabet, 13; the wooden, 65; the
iron, 65; the steel, 65, 66, 204;
Deere s, 65, 66; Oliver s, 66, 67;
Parlin s, 67; the lister, 67; pro
duced by Harvester Co., 146;
taken on by Harvester Co., 188,
189, 191, 192; sulky, 189; gang,
189; chilled iron, 191; coupled
closely to tractor, 220

304

INDEX

Poe, Edgar Allan, 7

Poland, McCormick s reaper in, 56

Potato diggers, 220

Power farming, 190, 192, 206; began
to appear in 1831 with the inven
tion of the reaper, 152; compared
with farming by animal power,
206-08; advantages of, 208, 209;
the power take-off, 209; the
Farwell (or all-purpose) tractor,
209-12; the harvester-thresher,
212-19; windrow method of har
vesting, 217; improvements de
signed to suit all-purpose tractor,
219, 220; motor-truck as instru
ment of, 221; aims to lessen cost,
222; increases individual pro
ductivity, 222, 223; social advan
tages brought by, 223; improve
ments in, probable, 224, 225

Power take-off/ 209

Prairie Chicken, The/ 93

Prayer-dances, 14

Presbyterian Church, McCorrnick s
interest in, 78, 79

Presbyterian Theological Seminary,
McCorrnick s interest in, 78

Processed manufacturing, 254

Production, the Harvester system
of, 247-69; machine, fundamen
tal principles of, 249, 250; cost of,
283, 286. See also Labor cost

Progress, 288

Progressive assembly/ 254

t Progressive machining/ 254

Propaganda, 99. See also Adver
tising

Prussia, McCorrnick s reaper in, 56

Public demonstration, 33

Rakes, no, 145, 146; side-delivery,
151

Ranney, of International Harvester
Co., 144

Reaper, attempts made by Robert
McCormick to build, 8-10; early
efforts to solve problem of, 10, 18,
19; problem of, solved by Mc
Cormick, 9-11 ; Obed Hussey s, 20,

23-25; sold by at least thirty firms
by the end of 1850, 34; Ban-all s,
46; Densmore s, 46; Talcott and
Emerson s, 64; Warder and Gless-
ner s, 64; the social importance of,
152; the progeny of, 204; self-rake,
204

McCormick s, demonstration of,
i; the initial machine of early
July (1831), 10; the machine of
late July (1831), 10; scene of in
vention of, 15; the essential prin
ciples of, 17, 1 8, 218; patented
(1834), 19, 20, 27; efforts at im
provement of, made by McCor
mick, 19, 20, 22; prse-i840 and
post-1840 styles of, 22; 1850 style
of, 22; sales of, 22, 23, 25-27, 29;
price of, 23, 50; newspaper ar
ticles on, 23; a license for man
ufacture of, sold to Seymour and
Morgan, 26; two other patents
secured on (1845 and 1847), 26, 27;
becomes McCormick s Patent Vir
ginia Reaper, 27; patent extension
on, refused, 27, 34; wheat produc
tion before, 29; in the Middle
West, 30; opportune appearance
of, 30; McCormick s production of
(through 1849), 34; the 1848 fac
tory, 36; growth of factory, 36-38;
improvements in, 43, 49, 57, 58,
64; the advertising of, 42-47;
traveling agents for, 47; in
Great Britain, 55, 56; prizes won
by, 55-57; in Europe, 56, 57; ad
vertising value of foreign reports
on, 57; its service in the Civil
War, 62, 63; the post-bellum style,
63; the self-rake machine, 164;
evolution of, 71, 72; new methods
employed in making of, 76, 77; is
now a thing of the past, 287; the
spirit of, alive in its heirs, 287, 288

Reapers, War of, 100; made by
Harvester Co., 145

Reaping hook, 12, 13, 29

Reay, of International Harvester
Co., 144

INDEX

305

Red Babies, 202, 235, 240

Repairs foreman, 232

Rice, cultivation of, in Java and

China, 14
Rolling mill, 1 10
Roosevelt, Theodore, his activity,

84

Royal Agricultural Society, Prince
Albert s, 55

Rumely Co., 140

Rumely tractor, 157, 159

Russia, farming in, 5; McCormick s
reaper in, 56; trade of Interna
tional Harvester Co. with, 122;
Harvester Co. s Works at Lu-
bertzy, 133; the tractor in, 158;
losses of Harvester in, as result of
Bolshevik rebellion, 174; power
machinery in, 245

Sales system, modern, 96; Mc
Cormick s, 112; Harvester s, see
Distribution

Salesmanship, the art of, 94-107

Salesmen, 227, 228

Sanitation, 137

Scientific American, on value of the
reaper in the Civil War, 63

Scotch- Irishmen, 30

Scythe, Invention of, 14

Section-hardening furnaces, 131

Seeding machinery, 146

Service, 141-44, 183, 191; a vital de
sideratum to purchasers, 127; work
the real root of, 233; Harvester s
ideal of, 241-43, 251, 291, 292

Service manager, 232

Service men, 228

Sewing-machine, invention of, 3

Seymour and Morgan, of Brockport,
McCormick sells license to, for
manufacture of reapers, 26; oppose
extension of original patent on the
reaper, 27, 28; oppose extension
of 1834 patent, 34; McCormick
wins suit against, 6 1

Shell-adapters, 175

Sherman Anti-Trust Law, 108, 117,
169, 170, 176

Shredder, 145

Siam, tractor in, 245

Sickness and death benefits, 262

Sisal fiber, 176

Society of Automotive Engineers,
amalgamates with Society of
Tractor Engineers, 162

Society of Tractor Engineers, amal
gamates with Society of Automo
tive Engineers, 162

South America, Trade of Interna
tional Harvester Co, with, 122;
McCormick and Deering machines
in, 244

Specialty men, 229

Spinning-mill machinery, 38

Springfield Works. See Champion
Works, 1 86

Stabilization, importance of, 126

Standard of living, of farmers and
city workers, 283

Standardization, 259; its part in
American manufacturing system,

4L 42

Stanton, Edwin M., counsel for
Manny in McCormick suit, 62;
on value of the reaper in the Civil
War, 63

Stationary gasoline engines, 124,
125, 130, 145, 147

Stationary thresher, 146

Steam-boat, invention of, 3

Steam power, its application to farm
problems, 153-57

Steam power plant, portable, the
first, 153

Steel, Bessemer process of working,
3; made by International Har
vester Co., 121, 128

Steele, John, his tavern, 3

Stephenson, George, 3; produces
railway locomotive, 153

Stock company, invention of, 40

Strassburg Clock, The, 92

Strike, at McCormick Works, 89;
railway, 135

Subagent, the, 226

Surveying instruments, made by Mc
Cormick, 8

306

INDEX

Sweden, Works of Harvester Co. at
Norrkoping, 133

Talcott and Emerson, their reaper,
64

Tariff, 283

Taylor, Frederick W., his book on
scientific manufacturing, 253, 254

Taylor, William, 19

Tedders, 147

Telegraph, invention of, 3

Tennyson, Alfred, 7

Thresher, horse- power, 204; steam-

\ power, 205

Threshing machine, 146; invention of
Robert McCormick, 21

Time and motion study, 254, 267

Tractor companies, 161, 163

Tractor Works, 132, 158, 160, 255

Tractors, built by Harvester Co.,
124, 130, 132, 145-47; not an easy
affair, 149, 150; the social import
ance of, 152; the history of, 153-
57, 205; gasoline, 154, 156; internal
combustion, 155; industry of, on
large scale, born in 1906, 155, 156;
plowing demonstrations of, 156,
157, 161; production of, 157, 158;
large-sized, 157-60; in foreign
countries, 158; small, 159, 160;
Bull, 159-61; Mogul, 8-16, 160,
163; Titan, 10-20, 160, 163, 255;
production of, 160, 161; Holt, 161;
Case, A very, and Moline, 161;
Ford, 161-63, 195-201; use in
power farming, 206, 207; advan
tages of, 208, 209; Farmall or all-
purpose, 209-12, 219; implements
planned to suit, 219, 220; have
brought in a higher type of farm
implement, 220, 221; McCormick-
Deering, 15-30, 255; spirit of
reaper still present in, 288. See
also Power farming
Trade guilds, 40, 41
Transfer warehouse, 242
* Traveling agents, 47
Traveling salesmen, 48
Trusts/ former feeling against, 164

165; suits against, 166-72, 180-

83

Twine. See binder twine
Tylochine, 92

Union Pacific R.R., 80

United States, population of, in 1831,

4
Jnited States Steel Corporation,

assumes leadership in cause of

safety, 133; suit against, 170
Utley, of International Harvester

Co., 144

Vacations, 262, 265
Valley of Virginia, the reaper demon
strated in, 1-3; described, 15, 16
Ventilating systems, 137
Vertical integration, problems of, 128
Virginia farm, a picture of, 85, 86

Wages, after the Great War, 176;
reduction of, in years of depres
sion following 1920, 177. See also
Labor cost

Wagons, 147

Walking cultivators, 188

Walnut Grove farm, 2, 23

War prosperity, 176

Warder, Benjamin H., his reaper, 64

Warehouse, branch, 233-36; trans
fer, 242

Warranty of product, 33

Waste-saving methods of manu
facture, a pioneer in, 33

Watt, James, his patent for a steam
road carriage, 153

Weber wagon, 123, 145

Weber Wagon Co., of Chicago,
bought by International Harvester
Co., 123

Webster City, Iowa, 52

Welfare work, McCormick s interest
in, 77, 78; Harvester Co/s interest

in, 133-39, 26*

Wheat, production of, in 1845, 29
Whitely, William N., works on The

Strassburg Clock/ 92; a feat of,

1 01

INDEX

307

Whitman, Barnes Co., Akron, Ohio,
1 08

Whitney, EH, inventor of the cotton-
gin, 3

Wilson, J. L., traveling agent for
McCormick reaper, 48

Wilson, John P., lawyer, 171

Windrow-harvester, 217, 218

Winnipeg, McCormick opens branch
house in, 243

Winnipeg tractor contests, 156, 157

Withington, Charles B., invents wire

binder, 69

Workers. See Employees
Working conditions, 136, 137
Workingmen s Party, 135
Works councils, 262-69
World War, 170-76
Wrenches, speed, 253

Yucatan, sisal fiber monopoly in,
176

1 02 062